A small studio, kept small on purpose.
Six or seven projects a year, each directed personally, with a small group of long-standing collaborators brought in when the work calls for them.
- Ilva Marchetti, Creative Director
- Lisbon, Portugal
The studio has been independent since 2018, after eight years spent inside larger design groups. That experience is the reason it stays small: the best work came from three people in a room with a clear brief, and almost none of it came from the layers built on top.
Work now runs to six or seven projects a year. Each one is directed personally, with a small group of collaborators — a developer, a printer, two photographers — brought in when the work calls for them. Nothing is subcontracted out of sight.
The studio is based in Lisbon and works across Europe, with clients visited at least once. Some of the most useful hours of a project happen in a workshop, a press room, or a building that is still under construction.
Five commitments the studio holds to on every project.
Fewer, further
Six projects a year, not twenty. The second half of a project is where the value is, and it only exists if the calendar allows for it.
Reasons, not rules
Every decision in a delivered system comes with the thinking behind it. A rule nobody can justify gets broken within a year.
Made, then judged
Ideas are tested as artefacts — printed, folded, built — before they are presented. Screens flatter work that does not survive contact with paper.
Restraint as a discipline
Two typefaces, one grid, a single accent. Constraint is not an aesthetic preference; it is what makes a system possible to hand over.
Plain language
No proprietary frameworks and no invented vocabulary. If a client cannot repeat the strategy in their own words, it will not survive their next hire.
Where the studio is most useful.
Direction
- Positioning
- Creative strategy
- Naming
- Tone of voice
Identity
- Wordmarks
- Type systems
- Colour
- Guidelines
Editorial
- Books & magazines
- Grid systems
- Print production
- Packaging
Digital
- Portfolio sites
- Design systems
- Motion principles
- Build supervision
Twenty years of practice.
Atelier
Independent studio. Identity, editorial and art direction for publishers, makers and civic practices across Europe.
Design Director, editorial group
Led the redesign of three cultural magazines and the type systems that outlived them.
Senior Designer, brand consultancy
Identity work for arts institutions and retail, with a long stretch in packaging and print production.
Junior Designer, print studio
Two years of book layout and press checks. Still the most useful training the studio draws on.
BA Graphic Design
Typography and print, with a final year spent almost entirely in the letterpress workshop.
- Figma
- InDesign
- Illustrator
- Glyphs
- Capture One
- Blender
- Letterpress
- Risograph
The first thing the studio did was remove half of what we thought we needed. It was the right half.
Our photographers now get a two-page brief instead of an hour-long call, and the pictures are better for it.
Have something in mind?
The studio takes on a small number of projects each year. A short note about what you are making is enough to start.