A worked example
Sofia Marin
Studio Practice — fictional brief Designed by the studio to a brief it wrote itself. The practice is fictional.
Her clients are tired of being read accurately. So the site describes nobody, and hands them the method instead: one sentence that never changes, and the meanings underneath it that do.
A complete concept website for a fictional integrative therapist in Brighton — and, published next to it, the strategic work that produced it. It is the only case in the collection where you can read the reasoning and then go and check it against the page.
What was particular
Competent, articulate, and wary of being described.
Sofia works with adults whose lives are working and no longer feel like theirs. They have been read a certain way by other people for years and are tired of it — which rules out most of what a therapy website normally does. No condition list. No “who I work with” panel. No warm second-person copy telling a reader how they feel.
So the site describes situations rather than people, and puts the fee, the session length, the working days and the free first conversation in the first screen, before any feeling is asked for. Its one interactive element is the practice’s own method: a sentence that stays fixed while the meanings beneath it are re-read. A visitor learns what an hour with her is for by operating it, rather than by being told.
Thinking, then design
Every decision on the page can be pointed at.
The document sets each strategic conclusion beside the thing on the website that came out of it. That is the part worth checking: open the site in one tab and the document in another, and see whether the second actually explains the first.
- No condition listBeing read a certain way is part of what these clients are tired of, so the page names no conditions and no client types. Ten situations instead, described rather than diagnosed, and wide enough that no single group can claim the page is about them.
- The fee, firstSceptical people check what something costs before they read anything emotional. Fee, session length, working days and delivery sit in the first screen as four plain numbers.
- One interactionThe practice is about the distance between what happened and what it turned out to mean. That is the site’s only interactive element rather than a paragraph describing it — the sentence fixed on the left, the meanings arriving on the right.
- Colour with a jobColour used as mood would contradict a practice built on precision. Plum marks the meaning layer and the identity mark that stands for it, and never a button, a navigation state or a form.
- The awkward facts, out loudThe first floor and the absent lift, the late-cancellation charge and the reply that may not come until the next working day are written as content, in her own voice, rather than as small print.
Read it
The thinking, in full.
Free to read, and it separates evidence from inference throughout: what the website demonstrably does, and what that suggests about the practice behind it. It is a portfolio case study rather than the written Practice Direction a commissioned practice receives.
PDF, 14 pages, about 100 KB. It opens in a new tab.
What is and is not being shown
Sofia Marin is not a real therapist.
The practice, the address, the email address and the photographs of the room are all invented for the concept. No professional registration, qualification, insurance, testimonial or clinical claim appears anywhere in the document or on the website, because inventing one would be dishonest rather than decorative.
The concept site says so on every screen, its enquiry form has no fields that could transmit anything and states that nothing was sent, and it is kept out of search deliberately. Nobody can contact a therapist who does not exist.
The crisis signposting on the concept site — Samaritans, NHS 111 and 999 — is real and correct, because a fictional practice is a poor reason to publish a wrong helpline number.
Where to next
The directions you can actually start from.
Sofia is a case study rather than one of the directions in the collection. If you are choosing a starting point for your own practice, that is what the collection is for.