How We Work
Great design isn't a style, stored in the mind, waiting to be used. We believe great design lies in exploring the green fields around us as well as the oaks that have grown strong. Understood like this, it's important in any studio you work that they have weak opinions about their aesthetic and strong opinions about exploration. When we design a brand identity, we start by determining a design strategy—an exploration. We identify goals, values, and audience. The style comes later, becoming one stroke of the brush that joins the canvas of other brand attributes to effectively achieve the goals outlined in the design strategy.
Values
Values are integral to our practice, and we partner with like-minded organizations who lead with impact.
We prioritize being in community, speaking honestly, widening our horizons, and cultivating whimsy.
Our interactions with technology are dominated by products made by companies so large that it would be impossible for one employee—even one person dedicated full-time!—to know all the others. If the means is the message, the Individual is abstracted away. There is another way, one where we can build for people—build for people we can talk with, we can connect with, we can learn from, we can know. This understanding is foundational to the belief that we need not retreat from technology, in this moment where its impacts seem so mixed, but we can instead contribute to its individuality and community motivations.
Our Name
Some of life's most exciting experiences exist in ordinary space. What's extraordinary are the ideas and how our understanding of ordinary life (and its shapes) can be elevated by the perspective we receive from and share with others. By giving our attention to atomic forms, to these ordinary shapes, we can promote durable ideas that travel easily.