Last Call

Why one branding studio refuses to pitch with a mood board — and what they do instead, even when clients ask for one by name.

An architect on designing a museum wing with no straight walls, why the client said yes on the first pass, and what almost went wrong in construction when the contractor's crew had never framed a curve before.

Inside the studio that hasn't touched a computer for client presentations in three years, and how they've kept winning work without one.

A branding studio on the pitch that got rejected in the first four minutes, what they changed after, and why they've never gone back to slides since.

A studio hands its physical space over to its newest hire for one month, no oversight, no budget cap, and no way to undo it before the partners return from a two-week trip abroad.

We got permission to play the room tone from a pitch that fell apart in real time, including the thirty seconds of silence nobody wanted to fill and the recovery attempt that came two minutes too late to save the account.

Once a year, this practice dissolves and reforms under a new name, new structure, and often a new office.