Design system · 02
Plain words, about their problem.
The studio writes the way a careful engineer talks to a client: directly, in whole sentences, about the thing that needs fixing. The voice is the same on a home page, in a proposal and in an error message.
Principles
01
Start with their problem
The reader arrived with something that is not working. Name that before naming anything we sell.
Tell us what is not working.
02
Say the smallest true thing
Promise what will actually happen next, at the size it will actually happen.
We will recommend the smallest useful place to start.
03
Evidence over assertion
Claims are tied to something that can be looked at: a funnel, an event, a number.
Funnels, events and session evidence show where intent is lost, instead of where we assume it is.
04
Commercial, not technical
The work is described by what it does for the business. Technology is named where it helps a decision, and nowhere else.
Conversion work is measured against the commercial outcome, not against a list of best practices.
Sounds like, does not sound like
On the left, lines the site carries. On the right, the version a template would have written. The difference is nearly always that ours says what happens.
Ours Tell us what is not working.
Not ours Let us unlock your digital potential.
Ours Get found where people look.
Not ours Maximise omnichannel brand visibility.
Ours Read what people actually do.
Not ours Leverage data-driven insights.
Ours Not sure which package fits?
Not ours Find the perfect solution for your needs!
Tone by situation
The voice does not change. How much of it there is does.
- A hero
- One claim and one sentence of support. The heading carries it; nothing in the block waits on anything else.
- A service description
- What it is, what is included, what you get at the end. In that order.
- A price
- The number, the currency and the period, stated once. No “from as little as”.
- An error
- What went wrong and what to do now. No apology theatre, no blame, and the reader's work is kept.
- A closing call to action
- A question the reader is already asking, and one button.
Mechanics
- Person
- “We” for the studio, “you” for the reader. Never “I”, never the studio in the third person.
- Contractions
- None. “We will”, “is not”, “do not”. It reads as considered rather than chatty.
- Headings
- Sentence case. A heading that is a sentence takes its full stop or question mark.
- Buttons
- A verb and its object, two to four words: “Start a conversation”.
- Spelling
- Australian English: colour, optimisation, organise.
- Lists in a sentence
- “And”, not an ampersand. No serial comma: “strategy, design, build and scale”.
- Numbers and money
- Numerals for anything measured. Prices carry their currency: “From $899/mo AUD”.
- Emphasis
- No exclamation marks, no capitals for stress, no bold mid-sentence. One underline per heading.
- What we call ourselves
- “The studio”. Not an agency, a consultancy or a team of experts.
Japanese
The Japanese pages are written, not translated: the same argument made again for a different reader, in the polite です・ます form. The names of the four volumes stay in English in both languages, because they are titles.
人とビジネスを調和させる。
The tagline: bringing people and business into harmony. It is set in Japanese wherever it appears, including on the English home page, and is never translated beside itself.
Rules
Do
- Open with the reader's problem.
- Write in whole sentences, without contractions.
- Name the next step and how big it is.
- Put a number or a piece of evidence behind a claim.
Don’t
- Use “solutions”, “leverage”, “unlock” or “seamless”.
- Call the studio an agency.
- End a sentence with an exclamation mark.
- Translate the tagline, or the titles of the volumes.