〰️ Studio Checkup
〰️ Studio Checkup
Studio Checkup
Your studio works.
It’s just hard to say how.
A set of tasks, one long conversation and a short list of moves to try. For founders of small creative studios.
Work comes in, but you couldn’t say why.
What you take on depends on capacity more than ambition.
Pricing feels like a guess every time.
You know what the studio does, but it’s hard to put into words.
Anything difficult ends up on your desk.
Sounds familiar?
Try three now
Five minutes. Pen and paper.
List your last five projects. Mark which ones you chose and which ones chose you.
Write your usual day rate. Now write the one you’d charge if no one could say no.
Describe your studio in one sentence to someone who’s never heard of it. Then cross out every word that could also appear on a competitor’s website.
If one of these was harder than you expected, the Checkup is built from many more like them. Or take the free Studio Self-Check: eight questions, three minutes.
How it works
01. Do the tasks
Before we meet, you get a set of prompts to work through in your own time (90–120 minutes).
They bring out what a studio usually leaves unsaid: habits, bottlenecks, unwritten rules, decisions you keep putting off.
02. Talk it through
A 2.5-hour session, in London or online.
We look at what came up, find where things pull against each other and choose what to test.
03. Get your moves
Within five days you get a short document with:
a reading of how your studio actually runs
the decisions that matter most right now
3–5 experiments to try over the next 30–90 days
Who it’s for
Founders of small and mid-size creative studios: design, illustration, spatial work, installations.
It tends to help most when something is changing: growing, slowing down, shifting direction, or feeling stuck.
Practical
Tasks: 90–120 minutes, in your own time
Session: 2.5 hours, in London or online
Document: within five days
One process, no retainer
Fee £1,500
One process. No retainer, no follow-on programme. I run a few each month.
Not sure yet? Start with a free 20-minute call.
Who’s behind it
Alejandro Ramos Saavedra is a designer and Senior Lecturer at Kingston School of Art, with postgraduate degrees from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London.
The Checkup uses the same method as Shubidubi and Actionary: small, concrete instructions that show how people really work.
