Your Business — About the Studio

// Manifesto
v3 · 2024

We believe the logo is the least decorative mark in a brand system. It's load-bearing — it has to hold up at every scale, on every substrate, for at least a decade.

We believe construction beats chrome. A mark that's drawn on a defensible grid will outlast three rebrand cycles. A mark that looks pretty in a Dribbble shot will not.

We believe the studio should stay small enough that the principal touches every line of every engagement. Five people, four projects in parallel, no junior pipeline.

We believe the brand book should hold up in court — that documentation is the design, and a guideline that's only forty slides deep is a guideline that didn't get finished.

The studio,
by the numbers.

2014

// Founded
Brooklyn, NY

147

// Identities shipped
across 12 years

// Permanent staff
+ 2 seasonal collaborators

// Active projects
at any one time, max

// Industries served
since founding

94%

// Repeat-engagement rate
by year three

// Awards on the shelf
(we've stopped counting)

// Studio cat
(Halftone, age 9)

The five who
actually draw it.

Maren Voss

// Founding Principal

Started the studio in 2014 after eight years at a New York identity firm. Lectures at Cooper Union. Draws every primary mark personally.

Joaquin Reiss

// Senior Designer · Type

Type system specialist. Trained at TypeMedia in The Hague. Quietly responsible for every workhorse pairing in the studio's portfolio.

Imani Olu-Hart

// Strategy + Verbal

Runs the diagnose phase end to end. Former editor at a brand-strategy quarterly. Writes the positioning briefs every engagement is built on.

Ben Hwang

// Production + Motion

Owns the system phase. Lottie + After Effects. Translates static identities into motion principles your engineering team can actually ship.

Petra Lindh

// Studio Manager

Keeps the four-project rule honest. Manages SOWs, schedules, and the only Slack channel we actually respond in.

Halftone

// Studio Cat · Tenured

Sits on every grid. Provides a final aesthetic veto by walking across rejected directions. The unofficial fifth designer since 2017.

Studio
history, plotted.

2014

Studio founded.

Maren Voss leaves a New York identity firm and opens a one-room studio above a Greenpoint hardware store. First client signed in the second month.

2017

First D&AD Wood Pencil.

Awarded for the Lateral Quarterly masthead system — the first project where we formalized the "drawn on grid" methodology that became the studio's signature.

2019

Joaquin and Imani join.

The studio commits to a 5-person ceiling. Joaquin builds out the type practice; Imani formalizes the diagnose-phase methodology.

2021

"Construction Over Chrome" lecture series.

First studio-authored talk circuit — Cooper Union, OFFF, AIGA. Becomes the foundation of the brand audit lead-magnet PDF.

2023

Communication Arts — Studio of the Year.

Profiled across 14 pages. Ben joins the studio that fall, formalizing the motion + production lane.

2026

147 marks shipped, still drawing on grid.

The studio holds at five people, four projects in parallel, and one cat. We're booking Q3 inquiries now.

Five people,
one grid,
twelve years.

The studio,
by the numbers.