Team 2 team
Team to team design is how we’ve always worked — not because it sounds progressive, but because the other way produces worse outcomes. When your strategist sits across from ours, decisions happen in minutes instead of weeks. That direct team to team design dynamic is what most studios promise and few actually practice.
Business design is shifting from human 2 human to team 2 team; this is becoming more and more important; team spirit produces more results than any individual effort. B2B<H2H<T2T.
As you know, the good old b2b is becoming a really old expression and was replaced with human 2 human in the past few years, and that was a beautiful change. But the reality is that we are all working as teams.
We (the client team + our team) will create something great, which is a good mantra to start anything. Using the plural to describe a team is an important shift in communication and is closer to how we do things—embracing the T2T. We all have teams, even small ones, even if not all of them sit in the same room—it is a team, and everything is a team effort. One person can’t know it all, and we can’t do it all on our own.
Even the results of team effort are much greater than anything else (check every team sport out there, check their spirit, check how they celebrate, how they help each other, admire how they lose, and get up again).
Discussing all aspects with the client is a team-binding relationship with a really good learning curve. Listening to each other is the correct spirit because individual approaches only build the ego we don’t want. Pushing something without all the aspects a discussion can give you leads to poor decisions.
But there is a catch. The team cannot work only on online meetings; you must have focused live meetings with the whole team. I know it is impossible to improve things over calls, chat, Zoom, etc. We all need to be there, we need to feel the people we work with, and we all need to be focused.
What Team to Team Design Removes from the Process
How we apply this approach to brand identity workDon’t miss the next essay. Signup for our newsletter
⸻ Newsletter signup
Sometimes we all need a little push
Need a little push before you can finally commit to a branding project? We've heard that hesitation hundreds of times — and it rarely has anything to do with budget. After 20 years and 81 logos, we've learned that the thing holding most businesses back isn't readiness. It's the wrong idea of what readiness looks like. Sometimes all it takes is someone telling you: you're closer than you think.
AI-Generated content should be in the public domain
AI generated content should be in the public domain — and we think most of the debate around this misses the point entirely. The question of AI content copyright ownership isn't just for lawyers; it shapes how designers, studios, and clients think about authorship. We've been watching this closely, and our position is clear: if no human author can be identified, the work belongs to everyone.
The highest award for a designer: finished work, payment, and client bragging
Designer success metrics are rarely what the industry tells you they are. We've delivered 128 projects across two decades, and the measure that holds is deceptively simple: the work is out in the world, the payment landed, and the client is doing your marketing for you. Those three moments, in sequence, define whether a project actually succeeded.
How Much Does Branding Cost?
Branding cost is the question every client asks first, and it's almost always the wrong place to start. We've worked through 128 projects since 2004, and the budget conversation only makes sense after we understand what the brand actually needs to do. Branding cost without that context is just a number with nothing holding it up.
A healthy brand
Healthy brand design starts with honesty — not aspiration dressed up as values. We've watched too many briefs arrive wrapped in sustainability language that dissolves the moment you press on the strategy underneath it. A healthy brand isn't greener or louder; it's structurally coherent, and that coherence is what we've been designing for since 2004.
Hell Yes
Hell yes creative approach is how we decide what to make — and what to walk away from. If a project doesn't produce that immediate, visceral pull, we don't take it. That filter, applied consistently since 2004, is the reason our work holds together as a body rather than a portfolio of compromises.
Should designers code?
Should designers code? We've been asking ourselves that question since 2004 — across identities, interfaces, and campaigns where design met production head-on. The answer depends entirely on what kind of designer you want to be, and what kind of work you want to make. Should designers code is the wrong binary; the real question is how much of the medium should you understand before you hand it off.
Remember when you learned to spot a stock photo?
You could see it from a mile away. The same thing is happening now. We are growing up developing an even sharper instinct for what feels generated, repeated, predictable, and empty.