Three ways, because the process was never really one thing.
I’ve been asked “what’s your process?” a hundred times over the years – in job interviews, client calls, the odd awkward networking chat. Every time I give a slightly different honest answer depending on who I’m talking to.
What is my answer? Well, I’ve done this job in three different ways, so let’s get into it.
- Solo, as a freelancer answering to no one but the client.
- Inside an agency, as one part of a bigger creative team.
- And alongside an agency, sitting as the outside consultant between the client and an external agency.
Same rough shape every time – introduction, brief, design, build, launch, sign-off with constant communication and testing throughout.
But the process around it changes completely depending on who else is in the room. Here’s what it actually looks like, three ways.
As A Freelancer
Full ownership, full stop.
Case studies like Barry Auctioneers, Interactive Interiors, Dubliner Cheese and Marymount Hospice all came from this stretch, and they all moved through more or less the same steps:
- Initial meeting
- Draft brief
- Present brief
- Contract in place
- Design stage
- Development stage
- Launch stage
- Training
- Sign-off (between the client and me)
Nothing in that list gets filtered through anyone else. The brief goes from the client’s head into mine and back out again, with no one in between to catch what I missed or talk me out of a bad call.
The good part of that is real freedom – I got to shape the whole thing my way, without a decision getting watered down by a team or committee on the way through. I worked together with the client to create something we were all going to be proud of, according to a set plan, timeline and price.
The bad part is the same thing from the other side – 100% of the responsibility sat with me, on everything, all the time. If something broke at 11pm, it was my problem and my reputation on the line. There was no one to step in and help, no second opinion, and honestly, no real way to switch off knowing I was the only one holding all the plates.
Inside An Agency
More hands, more process, more people to catch what you miss.
My time with 3B1, for example, working on projects like Envirobead and Sigma Homes, ran through a different shape entirely:
- Meeting with the full team to discuss the plan
- Initial client meeting to discuss the brief in detail (written by CEO)
- Agreement made
- CEO writes the contract
- Design stage
- Development stage
- Launch stage
- Training
- Sign-off (between the client and my CEO)
Notice what’s different straight away – the brief arrives already shaped before it gets anywhere near me. There’s a layer of process in front of the work starting, and another layer (contract, sign-off) sitting on top of it once it’s done. Less of it was mine to control end-to-end.
What that setup gave me instead was a strong creative team beside me, and the kind of security that comes from not carrying every problem alone. When something went wrong, it didn’t land on one person’s desk – it got shared across the team, and a solution came together faster because more than one brain was on it.
Alongside An Agency
Neither fully in nor fully out, I was the middleman.
This is the one that surprises people most, because it’s the least like “designing a website” and the most like sitting in the middle of two teams trying to get them to speak in the same language. I worked this way as a web consultant on Fáilte Ireland programmes – WAGS, Digital That Delivers, and Just Transition – as part of a much larger team involving RazorSpire. The process there looked like this:
- Audit the client’s current website
- Draft a new website brief
- Present the brief and get sign-off
- Share our list of external agencies working on the programme
- Ask for their proposals
- Review proposals and share feedback so the client can choose who to work with, without showing any bias
- Review the design and development stages
- Fully test the website before and after launch
- Provide a project completion report
- Sign-off (between the client and Fáilte Ireland)
The agency handled design, development, launch and training. My side of it was consulting and testing – which sounds like it should be the quiet seat at the table, but it’s often the busiest one. Because when a client and an agency don’t see eye to eye, someone has to be the bridge, and that someone was usually me.
Being diplomatic without playing favourites meant both sides genuinely felt heard. If there was tension – a design choice neither side wanted to budge on, an issue that needed explaining in more detail, a communication breakdown – I’d step in and find an alternative route through it. Not to win the argument for either side, but to keep the bridge between them standing.
So, What’s My Process?
Honestly? It depends who else is in the room.
- Freelance taught me to own a decision completely.
- Agency life taught me what it feels like to have people beside you when it goes wrong.
- And consulting alongside an agency taught me that sometimes the most valuable thing you can do on a project isn’t design or build anything at all – it’s to keep communication clear amongst everyone involved.
Three lanes, one destination: a website everyone is proud of.
If you’re interested in some examples of what can go wrong, I’ve written about this too.
