How we work

What kinds of projects do you take on, and how do you work at a smaller budget?

Brand and product launches, discovery work, design systems, product audits, and strategic frameworks including AI tooling setup. Two ways to engage: project-led delivery against a fixed quote, or embedded partnership at a daily rate on a rolling three-month minimum. We have run the second shape with Nokia and other clients over many years. Most engagements sit between £25K and £75K. A brand identity is typically £25K to £40K, and brand and website together is more. If you want to start smaller, a design audit is £3,500 and a week.

On a smaller budget we cut scope, not quality. That means writing down what the number buys and what it does not before anyone signs, so there is no drift later. On a £30K brand engagement you get the symbol, wordmark and lockup, colour and type, the supporting design language, the guidelines and a production asset pack. You do not get motion, illustration, naming or a website. Each of those is real work, and we would rather quote it honestly than absorb it and rush everything else.

If the budget is genuinely tight, the better move is usually a smaller piece of work done completely than a thin version of a big one.

What is the process, start to finish?

Four stages, and you talk to us directly through all of them.

• AlignWe agree scope, success criteria and where the project actually starts. You have a written plan within days.
• SimplifyWe cut before we add. Everything you see has already had to earn its place, and the wrong turns get taken out before they reach you.
• BuildDesign and build happen in the same room, with the same hands carrying the work from first sketch to finished system.
• RefineWe deliver, then stay close. The first weeks of adjustment after launch are part of the engagement, not a separate phase.

How much definition happens before any visual work?

About the first week, and probably less than you expect. If you have already done the thinking, a positioning document, an ethos, a set of references, we start from that rather than re-running a discovery you have already paid for with your own time.

What has to be settled before anything gets drawn is short: who it is for, what it has to feel like, and where it has to live. The last one matters more than people expect. A mark that has to sit on a physical product in bad light is a different problem from one that only ever appears on a screen, and it changes the drawing rather than the presentation.

Do we see anything before the polished directions?

Yes, and we prefer it that way. You see work in progress before the presentation: rough marks, type studies, the directions we tried and abandoned. It is the fastest way to find out that something we love is something you could never live with, and it means you steer early instead of reacting late.

Then three directions, distinct enough to be a real choice rather than one idea with two decoys standing next to it. You pick one and we take it through two rounds of refinement. Three is enough to decide from and few enough that each has had proper attention.

Is voice and tone part of this, or separate?

Separate, and quoted separately. It is a few days of work: how the brand talks, the principles underneath it, and a set of worked examples your team can write against.

Worth deciding early whether it sits in the brand budget or the website budget, because the website copy depends on it either way and it is cheaper to do once, at the right moment, than to retrofit.

How is the team structured, and who works on a project like this?

Both founders, on every project, directly. Tom leads positioning, systems and delivery. Rieko leads identity and visual craft. There are no juniors and no account layer, and the people you speak to are the people making the work.

Between us that is forty years in the industry. More Air spent nine years embedded with Nokia Design, leading design systems, UX strategy and product design across their global platform, and Tom held the Head of Experience Design role there, running the XD team in San Francisco from London. Before that, AKQA, R/GA, Sky and Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo, and the Ford autonomous vehicle work that won IDSA Gold. Rieko has spent twenty years in identity and illustration.

Some projects need motion, 3D, illustration or backend engineering beyond the two of us. When they do we bring in senior specialists we have worked with for years, chosen for the style the work needs rather than whoever is free. We direct them, we review everything, and the accountability stays with us.

The studio is small on purpose. It is what makes senior attention on every detail affordable rather than exceptional.

What notice do you need, and how far out are you booking?

Two weeks from a yes to a kick-off. That covers a scope document, a signature and a cleared deposit, and it is the honest minimum rather than a queue.

Beyond that it depends on what is already booked, so ask and we will tell you the real date. We take a small number of projects at a time, and if the one you need is not free we would rather say so than start late and manage it quietly.

How many weeks, start to finish?

Those are calendar weeks from kick-off, and they hold when feedback comes back within a couple of days at each review point. Turnaround on your side is the one thing that reliably moves a date, so we set the review dates together at kick-off rather than discovering the clash later.