Positioning · Identity · Websites
Fallow Vale is a seven-person agency working with independent makers, growers and service businesses. We decide what a company stands for, give it a design system it can run itself, and build the site that sells it.
How it starts
No pitch theatre and no speculative concepts. You tell us what the business is trying to change; we read it back as a scope, a sequence and a fixed fee, usually within four working days. If the work is wrong for us, we say so and point elsewhere.
Capabilities
Most clients start in one lane and move along it. Each lane lists what actually gets handed over, so you can judge the scope before you talk to us.
01
Interviews with your team and customers, a competitive read of the category, and a decision about what you are for — written plainly enough that anyone in the business can use it.
02
A wordmark, type and colour system built for the places you actually appear: shelves, invoices, delivery vans, a market stall and a phone screen. Drawn to survive being used by non-designers.
03
Hand-built, fast, accessible sites on a CMS your team can edit without us. We design in the browser, test on real devices, and leave the content model simple enough to maintain.
04
Seasonal launches and trade pushes: photography direction, copy, and the small set of assets a campaign genuinely needs. Produced on a calendar, not improvised each month.
Engagements
Pick the shape that matches your decision-making, not your budget — we will tell you if it is the wrong one before quoting.
| Model | Cadence | Scope | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| SprintFixed scope, fixed fee | CadenceTwo to six weeks, with a review at the end of each week. | ScopeOne defined outcome: a positioning decision, an identity, or a site of up to eight page types. | Best suited toTeams with a clear deadline and one person able to approve work. |
| RetainerMonthly, three-month minimum | CadenceA standing half-day each week plus asynchronous review between sessions. | ScopeA rolling queue you set each month: campaigns, new pages, packaging, continuous improvements. | Best suited toBusinesses with steady seasonal output and no in-house designer. |
| EmbeddedDay rate, booked in blocks | CadenceTwo or three days a week inside your own rituals and tools. | ScopeWe join an existing team to lead a workstream and leave the system documented. | Best suited toCompanies with internal marketing capacity that needs direction or cover. |
Selected work
What the client asked for, what we did, and what changed in the running of the business afterwards.
Chapter 01 — Positioning
Role: positioning, messaging, shelf and signage copy
Two shops selling the same range were describing themselves in two different ways, and the wholesale deck said a third thing. We ran interviews with staff and regulars, then wrote one positioning the owners could defend, with the language set for each place it appears.
Chapter 02 — Website build
Role: content model, design, build, editor training
A catalogue of 40 products lived in spreadsheets and PDFs. We designed a content model where each product is entered once and appears correctly across listings, guides and seasonal pages, then rebuilt the site around how people actually shop for kit.
Chapter 03 — Identity system
Role: identity, label system, templates
The nursery prints labels in-house on a small thermal printer, so a conventional identity would have fallen apart at that size. We drew a wordmark and a label grid that hold at 40mm wide in one colour, then handed over templates the growers fill in themselves.
Approach
Four steps, the same every time. You always know what you own and what you are waiting on.
You write or talk us through the problem. We return a written scope, a sequence of work and a fee, with anything we think is out of scope named explicitly.
You provide: the commercial goal and a decision-maker
Interviews, a category read and a look at your existing material. We come back with the decision we recommend and the reasoning, not a deck of options.
You provide: access to staff and a few willing customers
Weekly reviews on real pages and real artwork. Feedback is gathered in one place and resolved in one pass, so revisions do not sprawl.
You provide: one consolidated round of comments per week
Files, templates and a recorded walkthrough for your team. We stay available for a month of questions at no charge, then only if you want a retainer.
You provide: the people who will run it day to day
Questions
The six things prospective clients ask first.
Send the form at the bottom of this page with as much as you know. We read it, come back with questions, and book a one-hour call where we read our understanding back to you. If it fits, you get a written scope and fee within four working days of that call. Nothing is chargeable until you approve the scope.
Yes. The studio is seven people and we run two projects in build at a time, so the strategist and designer on your call are the ones doing the work. We occasionally bring in a photographer or an illustrator for a campaign, and we name them before they start.
A positioning sprint is two to three weeks. An identity system is four to six. A site of up to eight page types is six to ten weeks from approved scope, depending on how much content you already have written. Retainers run monthly on a three-month minimum.
Often that is the better arrangement. In an embedded engagement we join your tools and rituals, lead one workstream, and document the system as we go so it keeps running after we leave. We will not duplicate a role you already have.
One decision-maker who can approve work, one consolidated round of feedback per week, access to a handful of staff and customers for interviews, and whatever brand or product material already exists — including the parts you are unhappy with.
You own all final files and the licences for any commissioned photography. We answer questions free for a month after handover and record a walkthrough for your editors. After that you can take a retainer, book occasional days, or simply run it yourselves — we build for the last option.
Send a brief
A few sentences is plenty for a first message. We read every brief ourselves and reply either way.