Pattern Aesthetic Limited
Pattern Aesthetic Limited
A development studio on St Johns Lane, Bristol. We write the specification with you before anyone opens an editor, then build against it in two-week iterations you can open and inspect.
Vofcore is run by Pattern Aesthetic Limited from an office on St Johns Lane in Bedminster. Four engineers, one designer. There is no project manager between you and the person writing your code, and that is a decision rather than an oversight: every layer of translation is a place where a requirement quietly changes shape.
The studio started badly. Our first fixed-price contract — a stock system for a wholesaler out at Avonmouth — ran eleven weeks over, because we accepted a two-page brief and filled in the gaps ourselves. We absorbed the overrun rather than argue about it. Then we changed how we sell. No build starts without a paid discovery, and no discovery finishes without a document you could hand to a completely different studio and get back roughly the same software.
Everything since has run the same four steps, in the same order, on projects from £8,000 to £180,000. The steps do not compress. When a client asks us to skip discovery to hit a date, the honest answer is that we cannot price the build, and a price we cannot stand behind is worth nothing to either of us.
Five days, fixed fee. We interview your team, map the data as it actually exists rather than as the org chart describes it, and write the specification. You own that document outright, whether or not we build it.
Two-week iterations. Each one ends with running software on a staging URL you can open on your own phone — not a screenshot, not a progress percentage.
Nothing merges below 80% test coverage on business logic. Accessibility is checked against WCAG 2.2 AA before release, and we publish the failures we have not fixed yet.
Documentation, infrastructure defined as code, and repositories in your organisation from day one. If you want to take it in-house or move it elsewhere, there is nothing to unpick.
We do not take marketing websites, we do not take design-only engagements, and we turn down work under £8,000. Below that figure a good freelancer will serve you better and charge you less, and we would rather say so now than three invoices in.
A quote without a specification is a guess with a number on it.
Day rate £695, excluding VAT. The Bristol agency average sits nearer £600. We are above it because discovery is included in every line below, and because we do not bill for rework caused by our own misreading of a brief.
Fixed-price where the specification allows it, time and materials where it honestly does not. We will tell you which one you are getting, and why, before you sign.
Thirty minutes, no charge. Bring the problem rather than a solution, and we will tell you honestly whether it needs custom software at all.
Thank you. We reply within one working day, usually the same afternoon — and if we are not the right studio for this, we will say so and suggest who is.