PRACTICE
The client meeting nobody wants to have (and why we have it first)
By Plinth Studio · Nov 2024 · 2 min read
The awkward conversation is the one about money, and it's the first one we have — not the last.
Most design relationships start with the fun part: mood boards, precedent images, sketches of what could be. The money conversation gets deferred, sometimes for months, because nobody wants to be the one who brings the room down.
By the time it does happen, everyone's attached to ideas that may not survive contact with a real budget. That's a worse conversation to have late than early — you're not adjusting a plan anymore, you're grieving one.
So we have it in the first meeting, before a single image gets shown. What's the number, roughly, and what's it actually meant to cover? Where is there flex, and where genuinely isn't there? It's an uncomfortable hour. It saves months.
Clients tend to relax once it's done — not because the number gets smaller, but because nobody's pretending anymore. Everything we design after that point is real.
Let's talk about your space.
Tell us about the site, the brief, or just the feeling you're after.