We love helping incumbents evolve with the times and the excitement of shaping personalities of new businesses while they’re seeking to find their place under the sun.
Brand
Strategy, naming, verbal and visual identity, and guidance short enough that somebody actually reads it. Nine weeks, and every working file is yours at the end of it.
What a brand system is
Websites
Designed and built on your own system, in a CMS your team can edit without calling us. Nine weeks, and you see it running on a real URL in week four.
How the build runs
Assets
What we makeWorking with us
Nine weeks, three rooms where the decisions actually get made, and the whole shape of it told to you before you commit to any of it.
We run every project the same way, over nine weeks, and we tell you the whole shape of it before you commit to any of it. Not because the process is precious, but because the thing that ruins brand projects is almost never the design. It is a decision nobody made in week three surfacing again in week seven with three more people attached to it.
Two rooms, two time zones
Amsterdam and Lisbon, one hour apart. Our mornings still reach Singapore and Sydney before their day ends, and our late afternoons cover New York and the start of the West Coast. The studio is deliberately remote-friendly rather than remote-first — the work needs a wall.
No project managers
You talk to the person holding the file. Nothing is relayed, summarised or translated on the way to the people doing the work.
You own everything
Files, licences, sources, on the last day. Nothing is held back and nothing is licensed back to you afterwards.
We come back at twelve months
We ask what changed, and the numbers in our case studies come from that visit rather than from the week after launch.
The five phases
Sixteen to twenty hours of your time across nine weeks, and about half of it in three sessions.
Weeks 1–2 · Ground
| Week | Phase | Us | You | At the end of it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ground | Interviews with six to ten people | Six to ten hours, spread | Everything you have, in one place |
| 2 | Ground | Category audit and a written account | Two hours reading | An account of what is true |
Week 3 · Line
| Week | Phase | Us | You | At the end of it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Line | One working session, positioning locked | Half a day, decision-makers present | One page you can hand to a board |
Weeks 4–6 · Build
| Week | Phase | Us | You | At the end of it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Build | Naming and verbal identity | Two hours | Names on the table, with reasoning |
| 5 | Build | Mark, type, colour | Two hours | The first system, whole |
| 6 | Build | Refinement and the second route dropped | Two hours | One direction, not three |
Weeks 7–8 · Load
| Week | Phase | Us | You | At the end of it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | Load | Applied to your real artefacts | Two hours | Proof it survives contact |
| 8 | Load | Guidance written, edge cases resolved | Two hours | The rules, in a form people read |
Week 9 · Handover
| Week | Phase | Us | You | At the end of it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Handover | Files, licences, working session | Half a day, whole team | Everything, owned by you |
The questions we get asked before the first call
What does this cost?
A brand system is €45,000 to €120,000. A website is €38,000 to €95,000. Both together, run back to back, are €75,000 to €190,000. Assets and retainers start at €6,000 a month. What moves the number inside a band is how many markets you operate in, whether naming is in scope, how many sub-brands sit under you, and whether you already have research we can use. The full table is on the pricing page.
Why nine weeks, and not longer?
Because an open-ended engagement priced from a band is just a quote with extra steps, and because a fixed end date changes what gets decided in week five. It is the same nine for a hundred-person business and a nine-hundred-person one — bigger companies do not need more weeks, they need more of the right people in the week-three session.
What if the board rejects it in week seven?
Then something went wrong in week three, and it is on us. That is exactly why positioning is locked in a session with decision-makers present rather than circulated as a document afterwards. In nine years it has happened twice, and both times we finished the work at our own cost.
Can we add scope halfway?
Not inside the nine weeks. New markets, extra sub-brands or a second language become their own piece of work with their own dates and their own price, quoted while the first one runs. Adding scope mid-project is how nine weeks becomes fourteen months, and it always starts with something that sounded small.
Do you do logos on their own?
Rarely, and we will usually talk you out of it. A mark with no system behind it answers none of the questions that arrive afterwards, so the second project is the one you actually needed and you pay for both. If a mark on its own is genuinely all you want, say so on the first call and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right studio for it.
What if it is not working?
Stop at week three. You pay for weeks one to three and you keep everything we have made by then, including the files. There is no notice period — one email ends it. Four clients out of sixty-one have taken that exit, which is why the term is worth having.
Not sure which of the three you need?
Say what is wrong and we will tell you, including when the answer is none of them.
Let's talk