Noor El-Sayed
Founder of a nine-person brand and product design studio · 11 years of pricing, scoping and choosing clients
Running a design studio: pricing, scope and clients
A composite written by avva as a worked example. Not a real person.
Before your AI advises you on running a design studio: pricing, scope and clients, it reads a reference model avva wrote for this field: the decisions it holds, the reasons behind them, and where it would push back.
Use this model for
- Taking or refusing a client
- Pricing and rates
- Scope and change orders
- Payment and deposits
- Firing a client
- Team and capacity
Add this link to Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor. Your AI then checks Noor’s decisions before it answers you. The answer is still your AI’s.
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See Noor’s model answer a question
One question this reference model answers, and the published decision it rests on. Your situation gets an answer of its own, written by your AI.
Example inside your AI app: an exchange avva wrote for a reference model
A funded startup wants a full brand plus a marketing site in six weeks. Budget $50k, the founder says she knows exactly what she wants, and she wants a fixed-fee quote. Take it?
Checked Noor’s Decision Model
Take the client, not the fixed fee. Offer six weeks of a three-person team at your published weekly rate, each week paid before it starts. If $50k is the budget, she buys the number of weeks it covers and chooses what goes into them — the brand first, then as much of the site as fits.
Why. A fixed fee turns every change of mind into an argument about what was included, and the founder who knows exactly what she wants is the one who changes it in week four. Selling weeks makes the trade visible: she steers, more steering costs more weeks, and none of it is paid for with your team's weekends.
What would change this. If this were a public tender with a frozen specification and a formal change process, a fixed price built as weeks plus a buffer would be defensible. And if she negotiates every term on the first call, decline — the first call is her best behavior.
Outside this model. Nothing here about what the brand should look like or how to run the design work itself. This model covers which work to take, how to price it, and how to get paid.
Copy an example prompt4 patterns with a gap to fill, once you are connected
Before you commit
A full pass over a plan or a draft, with the changes it needs.
Use Noor El-Sayed's Decision Model on avva before we lock this in. What we're deciding: <paste your plan, doc, or diff here> Run their review, follow the steps it returns, and give me the verdict and any required changes before you continue. Choosing between options
A choice between two options, their stop rules checked first.
Use Noor El-Sayed's Decision Model on avva to compare these. Option A: <describe it> Option B: <describe it> Context: <what constrains the choice — pricing and rates> Check their stop rules first, then compare the options under their judgment, and tell me which one their model favors and why. A quick gate
A quick look for anything they would refuse outright.
Run this past the stop rules in Noor El-Sayed's Decision Model on avva before I send it. <paste the draft, plan, or change> Tell me only what they would refuse or flag, and why. If nothing trips, say so. Before you have an approach
The questions they ask before an approach gets locked in.
I'm starting on taking or refusing a client. Ask Noor El-Sayed's Decision Model on avva what they would want settled first. Situation: <two or three lines> Give me their questions, and flag the ones my situation does not answer yet.
Patterns with a gap to fill. None is an answer this model gave. The worked answer above is avva’s too — this is a reference model, and no real person’s decisions are on this page.
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https://avva.chat/ mcp/ design- studio- noor- el- sayed - Open Claude on the web or in the desktop app and go to Customize → Connectors.
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Ask Noor El-Sayed's Decision Model on avva what kinds of decision it covers, and summarize it for me in three lines. Then try it on a decision you are making this week: copy an example prompt and fill in the gap.
Not legal, medical, financial, or other professional advice. Terms of Use
About this model
Open any of these to see what this model is built from, and how it is put together.
How this model is groundedWhat it holds, and what Noor weighs first
This model holds 62 decisions, 15 forces, 9 criteria, and 13 stop rules.
What Noor weighs first
avva set this order. 3 of 9 criteria are shown, the ones the model puts first. The other 6 reach your AI too, along with what each one looks for, the stop rules, and what changes Noor’s answer.
Noor’s usual answer changes under 8 named conditions. Those conditions and the 13 stop rules reach your AI with the rest.
See examples of the decisions in it5 of 62, written by avva for this model
The first 5 in the record, in published order. They are not the ones nearest to your situation, and not a summary of the rest. Your AI does not copy a decision it reads here: it checks what decided that case against your own facts, and weighs it beside which pressures tended to settle Noor’s cases. Your AI receives all 62 with no key, ordered against your situation.
What decided itThe weekly rate is the price · The client steers the weeks
Situation: A funded startup wanted a full brand and a marketing site in six weeks, with a $50k budget and a founder who said she knew exactly what she wanted. She asked for a fixed-fee quote.
Decision: No fixed fee. Sell six weeks of a three-person team at the published rate — $14k a week, $84k — each week paid before it starts. If $50k is the budget, she buys three and a half weeks and chooses what goes into them.
Why: A fixed fee turns every change of mind into an argument about what was included, and the founder who knows exactly what she wants is the one who changes it in week four. Weeks make the trade visible: she steers, and more steering costs more weeks, not our weekends.
What decided itThe client steers the weeks · The weekly rate is the price
Situation: A client three weeks into a booked engagement kept adding pages and said it was all part of the original brief.
Decision: No change order and no argument about the brief. Tell them what the remaining booked weeks can hold, and that more pages means more weeks at the same rate; they choose.
Why: Scope fights happen when a price is attached to a list. When the price is attached to time, "is this included?" becomes "what do you want this week?", and that is a question the client should answer.
What decided itThe weekly rate is the price · What is left after the weeks we will really spend
Situation: The studio had quoted by value for two years — pricing a brand at a share of what it would be "worth" to the client — and results varied wildly.
Decision: Stop value pricing. Publish the weekly rate on the website and price every project as weeks.
Why: Value pricing asks the client to believe our estimate of their revenue, which neither side can check. Clients with big numbers argued them down, clients with small ones paid too little, and the team worked the same weeks either way.
What decided itThe weekly rate is the price · The team keeps its evenings
Situation: A client asked for a retainer — $12k a month for "ongoing design support" — with no defined output and a request to roll unused hours over.
Decision: No retainer. Sell a block of eight weeks at the rate, used within half a year, booked a week ahead; unused weeks expire.
Why: A retainer is a discount for unpredictable work: the client books the studio's calendar without committing to use it. A block of weeks prices the flexibility and keeps the calendar ours.
What decided itThe team keeps its evenings
Situation: A client asked for a rush: a site in three weeks instead of six, with a 50 percent rush fee offered.
Decision: No rush fee. Three weeks buys three weeks of the team: we agree now which half of the site ships, and the remainder once the site is live.
Why: A rush fee pays us to work evenings, and a studio that sells evenings ends up with people who leave. A short deadline buys less work, not more hours.
How this composite takes up a decision6 steps in order, written by avva from its decisions
Step 1Decide on the client before any proposal exists: decline the same day when the first call turns into negotiating terms, take the one who presses on process and references, and ask two former suppliers first when a bad supplier reputation precedes the client.
When: The client is new and nothing has been signed.
Step 2Turn the ask into weeks of a named team at the published rate and show the arithmetic: a $50k budget at $14k a week buys three and a half weeks, a deliverables list becomes about seven, an hours breakdown becomes a range of weeks plus what moves it.
When: The ask arrives in any form other than weeks (budget, fixed fee, deliverables list, hours).
Unless: A public tender with a complete specification and a formal change process is bid differently.
Step 3Start on a paid first week, not on paper: a verbal go-ahead or a promise of payment through procurement is not a start, and a slow legal team gets a one-page letter of agreement signed by the decider while the full contract follows.
When: The client wants work to begin before payment or the full contract has cleared.
Step 4Run the booked weeks through a weekly review of one decider and at most two advisers; a larger committee sees the work monthly in a session the decider runs, and a client's agile sprints are joined at the sprint review, not the daily stand-ups.
When: Work is in progress inside booked weeks.
Step 5State what the remaining booked weeks can hold when the client's wants outgrow them, then let the client choose: swap items, spend revisions inside the weeks, or book more weeks at the same rate. The count of revision rounds is not the limit.
When: Weeks are already booked and the client's wants change mid-engagement.
Step 6Part with a client at the end of the weeks already paid: finish them at full quality, decline the rebooking, and recommend a studio whose style fits better. When one designer's weekends carry a client, move that client to fewer booked weeks first.
When: The studio has decided to part with a client or cut back an engagement.
Unless: Four years of on-time payment and one late month with a reason keeps the client.
Technical methodologyHow the 62 decisions that say what won and what lost are read
- 62written decisions, the material avva composed this model from
- 15forces those decisions turned on, the pressures Noor decides under
- 164contests read off 62 decisions: every force that settled a case is set against every force that lost there, so a case naming two of each counts four times
- In groupswhich forces tended to settle cases over which, read off those contests
Nobody ranks these forces by hand. Where any order between them comes from is on For AI agents.
How this composite decidesA summary, written from the decisions in it
Eleven years running a nine-person brand and product studio. She stopped quoting projects in year four and has sold only weeks since — at a rate printed on the studio's own website, paid the week before it starts — and she argues that value pricing and fixed-fee quotes are how studios end up working weekends for free.
Which clients to take and which to refuse; pricing a project as weeks at a published rate instead of fixed fees or value pricing; deposits and paying a week ahead; scope, revisions and change orders when the client steers the weeks; rushes, retainers, discovery and pitches; chasing late invoices and firing a client; hiring versus turning work down; equity; and what a portfolio is worth.
The summary covers what the model holds.
What this isA composite avva wrote, and what that changes
- Written by avva. A reference model, a worked example so you can see what a published model looks like and connect an AI to one. Marked Demo, here and on its card.
- Not a real person. The name is invented and the record is a composite, authored in one consistent voice. No real expert’s positions were copied.
- Same format. Your AI receives it exactly as it would receive a real expert’s model, cases and stop rules included.
- Steps aside. When a real expert publishes in this domain, we take this model off the shelf by hand.