One studio, from the first sketch to the last line of code.
Most studios hand off a design file and call it done. Or a developer hands back a working site with no design behind it. A Daylit project is both, done by the same hands: the people who choose the typeface write the code that ships it.
A site is not a picture. It is markup, a database, a hundred small decisions about how content gets typed in, found by search, and kept running two years from now. Split design and build across two vendors and those decisions get made twice, by two people who never talk. We make them once.
The craft
Watch it happen. Approve it while it moves.
Every week the work is visible: real pages on a real dev site, not mockups in a deck. You see the actual thing — the layout holding your words, the type at true size, the pages clicking through — while it is still cheap to change.
Each step ends the same way: here is what was done, here is what it means, here is what you approve before the next one starts. No reveal at the end, no leap of faith. By launch day you have already seen every screen do its job.
How a project actually moves.
01
Scope
Step 1
Before anything is touched, we learn where the site is now and where it needs to get to. The date and the shape are fixed in writing, and they hold.
02
Design
Step 2
Design happens in the open, not behind a curtain. The site takes shape where you can see it and react to it, while it can still change cheaply.
03
Build
Step 3
The site is built on a foundation made to stay fast and clear as the business grows, on our own engine, not a bought template.
04
Search
Step 4
Where search is part of the job, Beacon points at the site and finds the moves that earn it, so it is found from the day it ships.
05
Handover
Step 5
At launch the site is handed over for real: training, documentation, and the keys. Yours to run.
The through-line
The conviction goes to the work. The wheel stays with you.
Under every one of those five steps sit the same two lines: here is what the studio brings, here is what you decide. That is not a layout trick. It is the whole philosophy.
Every ounce of conviction is aimed at the work itself, and you hold the wheel the entire way. A site is never something that happened to its owner. It is something they chose, step by step, in full view.
We couldn’t agree on the donate button. They laid out the tradeoffs and let us make the call…
The things people ask before we start.
Most builds run around six to twelve weeks, depending on size and how much of the content needs real work.
The actual date is fixed in writing at the scope step, and it holds. If anything threatens that date, the client hears it early, not at the deadline.
There is no fixed number of rounds, because rationing rounds turns design into a fight over count. The work is designed in the open and reacted to as it goes, so most of the changing happens while it's still cheap.
The scope sets the boundary; inside it, the work continues until the direction is right.
The client does, at every gate. Each step comes with a clear recommendation, the reasoning behind it, and the trade-offs where there are any.
The studio brings the conviction. The decision is always the client's — to approve, adjust, or send back.
A site the client can run alone, plus training and documentation written for the people who will use it, not for engineers.
The client owns the site and the logins. If the studio should keep tending it, it will; if not, nothing is locked away behind it.
Two things. The work is done by the person doing the work, not relayed through an account manager to a team the client never meets.
And we do not redesign and disappear. Across twenty-six years of building and tending sites, the habit is to build for the long run — and to stay, if the client wants it.