A small studio that cares about reading

The name comes from the notes readers leave in the margins of books: small, useful, close to the text. It describes how we think about websites. The main point should be clear and the supporting detail easy to reach. Nothing should be there for decoration alone.

What we believe

• Words come first. The design should serve what you need to say, so we write before we draw.
• Fast and light. Pages should load quickly on an ordinary phone. We avoid heavy frameworks and needless scripts.
• Accessible by default. Everyone should be able to use your site. We test with keyboards and screen readers as a matter of course.
• Honest. No invented reviews, statistics or promises. We will tell you when a smaller project will do.
• Yours. You own your domain, content and code, always.

Who we work with

Most of our clients are small and medium organisations around Oxfordshire: science and engineering companies, clinics and practices, publishers and educational businesses, professional firms, charities, guest houses, restaurants and shops. We enjoy work where clear explanation matters.

How we work

We are deliberately small. The people you speak to at the start are the people who plan, write, design and build your site. There is no account manager passing notes to a production team, and no outsourcing of the build to people you never meet.

Most projects follow the same shape, scaled to fit:

What the first month looks like

People often ask what working with us actually involves in the early weeks. For a typical small business site it goes something like this.

• Week one. A discovery session of two to three hours, in person or by video. We ask about your customers, your competitors, the questions you are asked most and what you want people to do on the site. We also ask for access to your current site, analytics and domain.
• Week two. We send a page plan: a list of every page, what it is for and what it needs to say, with notes on which existing pages to keep, merge or redirect. You comment, and we agree it.
• Weeks three and four. We draft the copy, page by page, and send it in batches so you can review without being swamped. Meanwhile we gather photographs, or brief a photographer, and start sketching layouts on paper.

By the end of the first month you should have an agreed structure, most of the words and a clear sense of how the site will look. Design and build follow from there, usually over another four to six weeks.

What we do not do

We do not sell long contracts, guaranteed rankings or packaged marketing bundles. We do not run paid advertising, and we do not publish reviews or testimonials we cannot show you the source of. If you need advertising or an ongoing search strategy, we will happily work alongside the people who provide it, and make sure the site gives them a sound base.

Why Oxford

Oxford is a city of readers and specialists, and its businesses reflect that: research companies on the science parks, clinics around the Headington hospitals, publishers in Jericho, engineers in Cowley, and the hotels, cafés and shops that serve its visitors. It is a good place to make websites that put clarity first, because the audience notices. You can read more about the places we work on our areas page and see how projects have gone in our case studies.