Philosophy

1. Focus on your mission

During the first recontres, the initial meetings, a lot of attention is paid to fully comprehend the “business” you are in. This understanding is crucial for delivering a good design.

Rather than talking about technical details (what template/colours are appropriate for the site, which subjects do you want on a photo), we will focus on your vision, on the people that will interact with the design, what message you wish to propagate, the image you hope to emit. Getting this part right, is half the job.

2. Good is good enough

As fair trade design does not pursue any commercial goal, we will not try to sell you stuff you don’t need. Also, we hate over-design. For example, when building a web site, we keep in mind that it will probably only last 2-3 years; that the site may not be visited by million users a day, that often the man power lacks to properly maintain the site. Dreams are great, but reality checks get you get things done in time.

3. Transparency

There are no miracles, no free lunches, so we believe in transparent and open communication. Our honest opinion is something you get for free. For example, Also, we will openly communicate as early as possible if some may endanger the budget or timing of the project. We employ a very transparent pricing based upon effort (as we are non-profit).

4. Smaller = better

Too many projects fail because they are too big — this is true in government institutions as well as in private companies (though it’s probably easier to hide in the latter). With fair trade design, we focus on realistic, small projects that can be delivered within a reasonable time and with acceptable manpower.

This way, we avoid big projects that die prematurely due to never-ending scoping, budget issues, integration failures, demotivation etc.