Saunter began out of a desire for a better way of doing creative work, one that aligned the needs and desires of clients and creatives to deliver the best results possible. Here’s how we do it.
Keep a steady pace
To us, no word has done more damage to modern work than the “sprint.” Of course, the intentions were good, but we just find that it puts everything into the wrong frame of mind. A runner cannot sprint for their entire race — otherwise, it wouldn’t be a sprint. We save that intense effort for the moments when it counts, but otherwise, we work deliberately, intentionally, and well, more like a saunter than a sprint.
Believe in completion
The other part of a sprint that bothers us is the idea that if something can’t fit into one arbitrary slot on a calendar, it simply doesn’t get done. Or it gets shifted to a different slot, where all of a sudden the context doesn’t make sense. In our work, we’ve noticed time and again that projects get to about 90% completion before everyone involved either loses interest and moves on to the next thing, burns out, or some combination of both. If the work is worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and it’s worth doing all the way.
Appreciate the details
The final element of the Saunter approach is an appreciation for detail and meaning. The name of our studio is actually a reference to the Great Saunter, a long walk around the full perimeter of Manhattan, that founders Cole and Kara have done together a few times. It doesn’t really mean anything to anyone else, but that doesn’t matter. The name of the studio is our project, and that’s a detail we appreciate. We seek to create details like that in all of our work, for all of our clients.