Every project we run has a logbook. It’s a plain shared document, one entry a week, and it records what we decided, what we tried and threw away, and why.
It started as a habit between the two studios, so Lisbon knew what Oslo had settled the day before. Then a client asked to read it. Now every client gets a copy at the end, and most of them tell us it’s the part they use most.
Why Write It Down
A finished identity tells you what was chosen. It never tells you what was rejected, or the reason. A year later someone new joins the client’s team, asks why the logo isn’t green, and nobody can remember.
The work shows the answer. The logbook shows the working, and the working is what people need when we’ve gone home.
Without that record, the same argument gets had again every eighteen months, usually with less information than the first time.
What Goes In
Each weekly entry is short and always follows the same shape:
- Decided. What is now settled, in one sentence each, with the name of whoever agreed it.
- Dropped. What we tried and let go, with a picture and the honest reason.
- Open. What we still don’t know, and the date we need to know it by.
Most weeks it takes twenty minutes to write. The dropped list is usually the longest, and the most useful.
How Clients Use It
We hand the logbook over with the brand files. Clients have used it to brief new agencies, to settle internal debates and, once, to answer a board member who wanted the old logo back.
It Answers the Second Question
Guidelines tell a team what to do. The logbook tells them why, which is what they ask the moment a rule gets in their way.
It Keeps Us Honest
Writing down why we dropped an idea makes it much harder to quietly bring it back three weeks later because someone still likes it.
If a decision isn’t in the logbook by Friday afternoon, it isn’t a decision yet. It’s a conversation, and it goes on the open list.
Start One Tomorrow
- 01Open one shared document per project, not per team.
- 02Write one entry a week, on the same day, with the same three headings.
- 03Put a picture next to everything you drop.
- 04Hand the whole thing over when the project ends.
It costs an hour a month. It saves the meeting where everyone tries to remember what happened in March.
- Process
- Clients
- Handover
Ingrid Solberg
Ingrid started Halden in Oslo in 2018 with three people and one borrowed desk. She still chairs Friday crit, and still loses the occasional argument there.
