- Taiwan is UTC+8. Overlap is roughly two to four hours with Central Europe and minimal with the US west coast.
- Asynchronous review costs one working day per cycle. Synchronous review costs one scheduling attempt, which is usually longer.
- Every stage should end with a written deliverable and a single explicit decision request.
- Ambiguous approval is the main cause of overrun, not distance or language.
Distance is rarely what makes an overseas design project difficult. What makes it difficult is unclear decision points, which cost far more when the next conversation is sixteen hours away.
This describes how we structure projects for clients outside Taiwan, and what we need from you for it to work.
What are the practical time zone constraints?
Taiwan operates at UTC+8. Against Central Europe that leaves a usable overlap of roughly two to four hours in the Taipei late afternoon. Against the US west coast there is effectively no overlap within normal working hours on either side.
The consequence is that live meetings are a scarce resource. Treating them as the default mechanism for approvals means a project advances at the pace of calendar availability rather than the pace of work.
How do you structure a project around that?
Each stage ends with a written deliverable and one explicit decision request. You review on your schedule and reply in writing. A review cycle then costs one working day, regardless of time difference.
Live calls are reserved for two situations: the initial briefing, where open ended discussion is genuinely more efficient, and any point where written exchange has been through two rounds without converging.
What a stage handover contains
- What was produced, with the files themselves
- What decisions were made since the previous stage and on what basis
- The single decision now required from you, stated as a question with options
- What happens next once that decision is made
- What is blocked until it is made
The fourth and fifth points matter most. If a client can see what a delay actually blocks, decisions arrive faster and with better information.
What does the project sequence look like?
A typical identity project runs in five stages: briefing, strategy, design direction, application, and handover. Each ends in a decision gate, and work does not proceed past a gate without a written approval.
- Briefing: usually one live call, followed by a written summary that you confirm or correct. That written summary, not the call, becomes the reference for the project.
- Strategy: positioning, audience and the criteria the design will be judged against. Agreeing the criteria at this point is what prevents design review from becoming a matter of taste.
- Design direction: usually two or three directions, each with a rationale tied back to the agreed criteria. You select one; the others are not developed further.
- Application: the chosen direction extended across the agreed deliverables, including business cards and other collateral.
- Handover: files, specifications and usage rules. Covered in design file handoff.
How are revisions handled?
Revision rounds are defined per stage in the agreement, and a round means one consolidated set of feedback rather than a series of individual comments. Consolidation is what keeps a round from expanding indefinitely.
The most useful thing a client can do is send feedback once, from all stakeholders, with conflicts already resolved internally. Sequential feedback from different people frequently contradicts itself, and reconciling it is not something the studio can do on your behalf.
Feedback framed against the agreed criteria is more actionable than feedback framed as preference. “This does not read as premium to our enterprise buyers” can be worked with. “I do not like the blue” cannot, unless the blue was already identified as a constraint.
What language does the project run in?
Project communication, written deliverables and specifications are in English for international work. Our internal working language is Traditional Chinese, and production files may carry Chinese annotations, which we translate on request.
Where language genuinely affects the design rather than the process is in bilingual identity work, since Chinese and Latin scripts behave differently on the page. That is a design question rather than a communication one, and is covered in designing bilingual identity systems.
How is progress tracked?
Each stage has a stated deliverable and a target date. Status is reported in writing at each handover, including anything that has slipped and why.
We do not report progress as a percentage. A design stage is not partially complete in any meaningful sense; it is either at a point where you can make a decision or it is not. Reporting against decision gates is more honest and more useful.
What causes overseas projects to overrun?
In our experience the main causes are ambiguous approval, late stakeholder introduction, and missing source material. None of them is caused by distance, but distance amplifies all three.
- Ambiguous approval: “looks good” is not an approval if it is followed by changes. A gate needs an explicit yes.
- Late stakeholders: someone who first sees the work at application stage will raise strategy level objections, which means returning to a gate already passed.
- Missing source material: existing logos in raster format only, or typefaces without transferable licences, surface at production and stop it.
All three are avoidable by front loading: confirm who approves, get them into the strategy stage, and audit existing assets at briefing rather than at handover.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need to meet in person?
No. Identity projects can run entirely remotely, and most of ours with overseas clients do. In person time is most valuable at the briefing stage if the project depends on understanding a physical space or product, and least valuable for design review, which works better in writing.
How quickly do you respond?
Within one Taiwan working day for written enquiries during a project. If your message arrives during your working day, our reply will typically be waiting when you next start work. This is the intended behaviour of an asynchronous process rather than a limitation of it.
Can you work with our existing agency or printer?
Yes. We can supply print ready files and specifications for another party to produce, or work to guidelines produced elsewhere. Where responsibility is split, we recommend agreeing in advance who signs off colour on press, since that is where disputes usually arise.
What do you need from us to start?
Existing brand assets in their original formats, a list of the deliverables required, the names of everyone who has approval authority, and any hard constraints such as a launch date or an existing typeface licence. The asset audit is worth doing carefully, since gaps found later are the most disruptive.
Written by Howdy Creative, a brand design and cultural planning studio in Taichung, Taiwan. The structure described here is how we run projects where live overlap is limited, and it is built around the observation that written decision gates cost less than scheduling attempts.
