From terrible contracts to visual contracts
As a strategic design agency focused on accelerating positive change through innovation, we wanted to bring Design Thinking to every level of our actions. We apply its value to our projects and how we agree and develop our client partnerships.
At Koos, we used to see traditional contract negotiations as cold-war deterrence, with two parties aiming endless pages with little black letters at each other. These negotiations are the exact opposite of how we like to approach our projects and build relationships internally and with our clients.
That is why we set ourselves to redesign the way we negotiate our collaboration with big corporations, together with Lieke Beelen and Dorrit Theunissen from Visual Contracts.
So we moved away from boring, soulless, outdated Terms & Conditions towards a negotiation that aligns with our values. The outcome is a visual, intuitive conversation starter that empowers our team to be more confident in explaining and discussing the topics that are important to us in a common language and emphasising the key points of our agreement in a simplified manner.
This is our first step towards signing contracts based on trust and aimed at building transparent, equal and long-term relationships.
Adding visual storytelling to legal content
Visual contracts: legal documents aligned with our values
We used to be a bit scared of the big procurement departments with long documents filled with complex terminology and small print. Our new visual contract brings the conversation into an open and creative space, allowing easy understanding of the value we offer and what we expect in return in a visual and tangible way.
And the cool thing is that we are not just talking about invoicing, liability or IP. We are especially focusing on our values, our ethical compass, who we want to work with and what running a project with us will look like.
The currently used Terms & Conditions, co-created with Visual Contracts can be found here.
The next phase of this legal design approach will focus on applying the Visual Contracts approach on our improving employee contracts.