I came to business from books.
My name is Margaret Colhoun, the founder of Thesis and a PhD candidate in English. My work has involved years of developing a thesis: following an idea, drafting an argument, revising it, and learning to defend the choices that give it shape.
That process taught me to pay attention to the relationship between a central idea and the details that express it. A word can change the meaning of a sentence. A revision can reveal what the argument was trying to become. Often the most useful question is simply what you mean, and whether what is on the page says it.
I bring those habits here. A brand has a central idea too: a reason for being, a particular way of seeing its work, something it wants to offer the people who encounter it. Its name, visual identity, language and website are all ways of expressing that idea.
My job is to help you articulate yours.
We begin with your work
You may have an idea that is still taking shape, or a business with a history and a character of its own. I want to understand what you make or do, what matters to you about it, and what you want it to become.
We talk, look, and weigh the possibilities before settling on a direction. From there I develop the materials the business needs, with time for you to respond and for the work to grow more exact through revision.
The aim is for the finished identity, writing and website to feel particular to your business. You should recognize your own thinking in the work, and the people who encounter it should be able to understand what you offer.
Building a business of my own
I also founded Pierrepont, a Brooklyn needlepoint atelier. Developing its identity, writing its website, and building the practical systems around its products gave me another way to work with the questions that interested me: what is the idea, what does it ask of the details, and how does someone else encounter it?
I found that I enjoyed the business taking shape around the canvases — the name on the packaging, the words introducing a collection, the information a shop needs before placing an order. Thesis grew from that work, and from wanting to bring the same attention to other independent businesses.
A studio of one
Thesis is a studio of one, and that is a decision rather than a stage. I take a small number of projects at a time and do the work myself, from the first conversation through the writing, design and build. There is no handoff between the person who listens to you and the person who writes the words. When you write, I answer.
Every engagement also ends. What you should have at the end of one is something finished, in your hands, that you understand well enough to keep running without me.
Who Thesis is for
Independent brands whose character comes from the people behind them: makers, photographers, stationers, florists, calligraphers, wedding planners, ceramicists, illustrators, jewelers, bakers, artists, and others building something of their own.
Some are opening for the first time. Some are refining an established practice or preparing for a new direction. What we share is an interest in giving the work an exact and particular expression.
One thing said plainly, because you will work out the arithmetic anyway: the company I built and run is a product company, and it is the case study on this site. What carries across to a photographer or a planner is the part that was always the hard part — hearing your voice, writing it down, and building something that does its job while you are busy doing yours. What does not carry across is wholesale, which belongs to businesses with something to ship, and which says so on the services page.
A word to the needlepoint brands
I run a needlepoint company, and I take needlepoint clients. I know the painters and the finishers, the mesh counts and the trade shows, the shops that will carry you and the ones that will keep you waiting, and the beginner who leaves a canvas in her cart because she has decided she will get it wrong. Very little of that has to be explained to me.
The overlap deserves saying out loud rather than discovering later. If your work and Pierrepont's sit close together, I will tell you on the first call exactly where, so that you can decide with the whole picture in front of you. What you tell me stays with me, and what I know from my own studio stays there.
If that sounds like you, write to me.