Good design is not one thing.
Neither are we.
Strategy and craft. Words and visuals. Big-picture thinking and an unreasonable interest in the tiny details.
TWO people, one room
Workflows in any agency resemble a game of Broken Telephone (or Chinese Whispers). Clients explain their needs to one person. That person explains it to another.
Somewhere several handovers later, a creative team receives a brief that’s the best interpretation of something from someone they’ve never met, based on a conversation they’ve never heard.
Efficient? Not particularly.
Clients explain the problem. Creatives ask the questions. TWO sides of the table, working on the same problem with zero degrees of separation.
Stronger, TWOgether
The creative industry’s imagined dichotomies don’t hold us back, because the best work rarely chooses one over the other.
Respect. Depth. Attention.
These aren’t “values” in the laminated-poster-on-the-breakroom-wall sense. They’re instincts we’ve honed firsthand.
Respect
Aretha Franklin wasn’t kidding when she said you can’t TCB (take care of business) without R-E-S-P-E-C-T. We show up prepared, read the brief, pay attention and ask the right questions.
We expect it from the people we work with because they should expect exactly the same from us.
Depth
We love rabbit holes.
Whether that means understanding the fluid dynamics of glass to create a better logo, learning why one electric motor works differently from another just to help us zero in on brand colours, or learning what makes Turkish energy traders tick so a website understands their needs.
Yes, this is more than anyone in a design and editorial studio reasonably needs to know. But the work is way better when we come back out.
Attention
Design has come a long way from the Paradox of Noticeability to the mass ‘beigification’ we’re seeing today, where it’s impossible to tell the difference between a software company, soft tissues, and soft serve.
Not if we can help it.
We believe that refinement is the ultimate form of respect. The rhythm of a sentence. The space around a logo. A loading state. A badly behaved line break. The handoff file that saves somebody an hour six months from now.
People might not point at those things and applaud, but they definitely feel them.
Bigger ideas. Finer details.
TWO is where the wide view and fine line converge. Things that are often made to compete actually become stronger together.
That’s our bedrock.