You own everything
Every source file, at handover, without asking. No licence, no monthly fee to keep using your own logo, no holding your artwork hostage.
- Home
- Studio
The studio
We only work
with people who
build things.
That is not a marketing position. It is the reason the work is any good.
01Why the trades
A studio that works with everyone learns a little about everything and nothing about anything.
Specialising sounds like a limitation and behaves like the opposite. Because we only work in this sector we already know what a PQQ is, why the second van matters more than the first, what a main contractor actually looks at, and why your logo needs to survive being cut in vinyl by someone in a unit off the ring road.
That knowledge is not glamorous but it removes about three weeks of explaining from every project, and it means the work is right for the job rather than right for an awards entry.
It also means we can be honest about what will and will not move the needle for a firm your size, because we have watched it happen dozens of times.
02How we work
Five rules
we keep to.
Most of these exist because we got them wrong once.
Two routes, not eleven
Showing a client thirty logos is not generosity, it is a refusal to make a decision. We bring two we believe in and argue for one.
Fixed quotes
After the survey you get a number. It does not move unless you change the brief, and if we underestimated the job that is our problem.
We say no
If a firm is too small for what we charge, or wants something we do not think will work, we say so on the first call rather than take the deposit.
No vanity metrics
We will never send you a report about impressions. The measures that matter are enquiries, tenders won, and what you can charge.
03What we will not do
The short
list.
- Monthly SEO retainers with no defined end
- Rented websites you never own
- Stock photography of models in clean hard hats
- Anything hi-vis yellow, unless it is genuinely PPE
- Strategy decks that end with a question mark
- Working with two competing firms in the same town
The last one matters more than it sounds. If we have built a brand for a roofer in Watford we will not build one for their nearest rival, however good the fee.
04The studio
Small, and
staying that way.
ACT for Trades is a small studio in the United Kingdom. The people who take your call are the people who do the work — there is no account layer between you and the person holding the pen.
We take on a limited number of projects at a time, which occasionally means a wait. It also means nobody is running four jobs at once and giving yours the leftovers.
Talk to us