Studio Freight is a world inventive studio that strikes missions ahead with technique, design, expertise, and mettle (we use the final one as a reminder that it takes actual dedication to construct nice issues).
We associate with groups at early-stage startups and well-known pioneers like ElevenLabs and Perplexity to launch manufacturers, web sites, campaigns, and particular tasks (the wilder the higher). Whereas each workforce is completely different, the widespread aim is to be seen as devoted companions who care as a lot as they do, which we jokingly check with as a little bit of a ruse, as a result of we goal to care concerning the particulars that almost all don’t within the spirit of creating issues actually nice.
Journey
We began in Columbus in 2016, removed from the business’s traditional facilities and with out the relationships that open the primary doorways, so we made our personal manner. Within the early days, we stated sure to almost every little thing and handled each challenge like the entire studio rode on it. We used to say we don’t get fascinating tasks, we make tasks fascinating.
Alongside the best way, we’ve labored throughout many various kinds and classes to remix expectations, whether or not it’s bringing an insurgency perspective to B2B SaaS or a slick tech vibe to ecommerce. And like others we admire, we’ve constructed experiences and applied sciences with new instruments, from constructing 3D worlds within the browser to incubating Lenis, the smooth-scroll library (now managed by Darkroom Engineering).
Nowadays we spend our time with folks constructing what comes subsequent, founders and groups with actual missions and the resolve to see them via. For us, nice design is the baseline, not the aim. The work we care about begins after that, understanding a mission effectively sufficient to maneuver it ahead, and serving to corporations that may win anyway win larger.
Showcase
Psyop
Psyop has spent twenty-five years shaping tradition for the likes of Nike, Google, Coinbase, Disney, and Snoop Dogg. Its cinematic work throughout animation, stay motion, VFX, and gaming earned it the nickname the Pixar of promoting. The output stored climbing whereas the model fell behind, its emblem carrying the entire load and a whole lot of case research buried behind a director roster solely insiders knew how one can learn.
We regarded on the title sequences of administrators like Scorsese and Tarantino, the place the sort is handled as severely as the rest on display screen, and constructed an identification expressive sufficient to carry its personal and restrained sufficient to let the work lead. The brand new web site turned that buried portfolio into one thing searchable, filterable, and shareable in a single hyperlink, a gross sales software that by no means appears like one. Psyop made its identify making different manufacturers not possible to overlook, and this lastly returns the favor.
ElevenLabs Retailer
ElevenLabs is making voice a extra pure manner to make use of expertise, so when their inventive workforce needed a presence for NY Tech Week, an abnormal merch drop was by no means going to say it. They imagined a retailer you would speak to, the place folks browse, place an order out loud, and haggle over the worth in dialog.
We designed the merch capsule and constructed the storefront across the similar power that runs via the corporate, sharp, playful, and deeply technical with out ever feeling chilly. With the conversational ordering layered in, the store stops being a spot to purchase a shirt and turns into a small, tactile dialog with the model itself.
Perplexity Comet
Perplexity constructed its identify on a solution engine that returns concise, cited responses as an alternative of a web page of paid hyperlinks. Comet carries that additional into an entire browser, and when the workforce introduced us in to launch it, the product was nonetheless an idea. No demo, no characteristic record, no wireframes, only a conviction that information needs to be simpler to succeed in and simpler to belief.
So we designed the likelihood relatively than the product. The visible language grew round cosmic themes, with planets standing in as vessels for what Comet may maintain and parabolic traces borrowed from orbital paths carrying movement throughout the system. Typography expands on hover, rewarding curiosity with slightly extra of itself. The positioning descends from house to Earth as you scroll whereas the announcement video travels the opposite manner, so each returns you to the place the opposite left off.
Esther
Esther enters a class that has recycled the identical pirates and sticky sweetness for many years whereas tequila and gin quietly claimed the cultural excessive floor. It’s the premium single-origin Colombian rum out to win that floor again, one modified thoughts at a time.
Its model runs on duality and reflection, all the way down to a shiny inexperienced cap you possibly can spot clear throughout a bar, and it got here to us to hold that identification onto the display screen. We wrote new guidelines as we designed, understanding how every aspect ought to transfer and behave on-line till the entire system took on an web aura totally its personal.
Tradition & Staff
Our workforce comes from many locations and backgrounds, together with former educators, artists, scientists, engineers, and ministers. We love that there are a lot of experiences and philosophies behind each dialog. We don’t all the time agree however therein lies the chance to reach on the non-obvious.
What retains our variations from turning into noise is how we work. We follow the artwork of brutal magnificence, which is basically about being trustworthy about what really issues even when it means dropping good concepts for one nice one, and disciplined about making issues precisely as they need to be, no extra and no much less. All with a way of shared objective and mutual respect, as outlined in our rules. Our seventh, “Rally Others On,” encourages us to speak one another up, assume good intentions, and keep in mind we’re all largely making it up as we go.
