Charshanbe means "Wednesday" in Farsi, and our story began with something disarmingly simple: a few of us meeting midweek. It was just a rhythm, a check-in with no grand ambitions—simply creating space to witness where things truly stood, alongside our desire to create something meaningful. What started as these Wednesday gatherings eventually became our entire design philosophy.
We've learned to start by listening to rhythm and frequency—those subtle pulses that are so often overlooked in our collective rush toward outcomes. Before we dive into strategy or solutions, we take time to attune ourselves to what's already in motion around us. There's wisdom in what's already happening if we're willing to pay attention.
Rather than operating from the intoxication of beginnings or the neat resolution of endings, we choose to work from the middle—that liminal territory where most people grow uneasy and instinctively try to accelerate through. But we've discovered that the middle is actually where the genuine work unfolds. It's where clarity dissolves into necessary confusion, where silence starts to speak, and where even the most polished concepts begin to unravel.
The middle is that inevitable phase where your original plans start bumping up against reality. It's the moment when what you thought you were building begins to reveal its own agenda. This is the space where you realize your creation has outgrown its expected shape, where your brand no longer fits who you are, and where systems you designed start responding in unexpected ways. Instead of fleeing that uncertain terrain, we've learned to inhabit it fully. This is what we call process orientation—designing with what's emerging, not just what's already defined. It means staying present in the middle, not trying to fix it immediately, but taking time to understand what it's trying to tell.
Process orientation is really about attunement to the undercurrents that flow beneath strategic frameworks, performance metrics, and temporary trends. It's less about prescribing the next steps and more about noticing what's already shifting around us and learning to collaborate with those natural movements. We find ourselves asking different questions: What's naturally completing its cycle here? What's quietly trying to be born? Where is the process already leading us if we stop trying to control every outcome?
We've come to understand that systems carry their vitality, ideas naturally evolve, and processes have their intelligence. You can resist that organic flow, or you can learn how to move with it gracefully. We've witnessed what happens when people try to skip through the middle too quickly—premature clarity that doesn't hold, launches that look polished but feel empty, and burnout from chasing visions that no longer fit who they've become.
But we've also seen what happens when people lean into the middle with patience and curiosity. Brands rediscover their authentic voice, systems begin to breathe naturally, and systems start to speak back with their wisdom. This isn't mysticism—it's simply process orientation. It's choosing to stay curious longer than feels comfortable and resisting our cultural urge to fix things before we truly understand them.
At Charshanbe, we collaborate with those who are willing to pause in this way. We work alongside founders navigating significant transitions, brands sitting at real inflection points dealing with identity shifts or market changes, and teams who don't want another off-the-shelf framework but are seeking genuine resonance. Our clients are typically driven by values, not just outcomes. They understand that what they build carries their energy and intentions forward into the world, and they treat their work as something alive and worthy of deep listening.
We don't offer ready-made, "done-for-you" solutions because that's not how real transformation works. Instead, we listen carefully, work alongside you as real partners, and design from understanding rather than assumptions. When you build with the process rather than against it, something shifts fundamentally. You stop forcing outcomes and start seeing with greater clarity.
So if you find yourself in the middle right now—somewhere between clarity and not-knowing, between who you were and who you're becoming—you're welcome here. You're not broken, and you're not off-track. You're simply in process, and if you stay with it long enough, something genuinely real will take shape.
This is the space we work from, the rhythm we design with, and the creative tension we've learned to trust. Because the middle isn't where progress fades away—it's actually where it finally starts to take root and grow into something sustainable and true.
Ali Maghsoodi, Co-founder of Charshanbe design studio