The studio · Est. 2014
Fourteen people who refuse to be background noise.
Volta & Co. is an independent creative studio in Berlin and New York. We take two projects at a time, we write the argument before we draw anything, and we hand over systems rather than slideshows.
What we argue for
Five positions,
held in public.
- 01
A brand is an argument, not a mood board.
If we cannot write down why you win in one sentence, no amount of art direction will cover it. The sentence comes first and everything after it is evidence.
- 02
Loud is a decision, not a volume knob.
Being impossible to ignore is not the same as being the biggest thing on the page. Pick one thing to be loud in and make everything else quiet enough to hear it.
- 03
Constraints are the brief’s best part.
Six weeks, one lighting setup, four presses in two countries. The constraint is usually where the idea is hiding, so we go looking for it in the first meeting.
- 04
Ship the system, not the slideshow.
Every engagement ends with something a client team can run without us: tokens, a grid, a manual, a naming spine. A presentation is not a deliverable.
- 05
We will tell you when we are wrong.
Twice we have taken a route to launch and watched it underperform. Both times we said so first, in writing, with what we would do differently. It is why those two clients are still here.
Who you actually get
Fourteen people.
No handover.
The people in the pitch are the people on the work. We are small on purpose and we take two projects at a time for the same reason.
-
Ilse Brandt
Founder · Strategy
Founded the studio in 2014 after nine years in-house. Runs the interrogation phase and writes the sentence everything else has to survive.
-
Marek Voss
Partner · Design Direction
Type first, always. Draws the wordmark at 40mm before he draws it at four metres, on the grounds that only one of those is hard.
-
Hanne Sørlie
Design Systems
Turns a set of preferences into a set of measurements. If it cannot be handed over, she has not finished it.
-
Adaeze Kuti
Film & Motion
Shoots on live floors at unreasonable hours. Believes a launch film with a voiceover is usually a launch film that lost an argument.
-
Tomas Reál
Front-end
Builds what the design promised, at the frame rate it promised it. Ships the tokens as code so the system cannot drift.
-
Junia Oyelaran
Programme Director
Holds the dates. Six weeks means six weeks, and she is the reason that sentence has stayed true four times.
How we are put together
Small, on purpose.
- Founded
- 2014, Berlin
- Studios
- Berlin · New York
- People
- 14 full-time, no freelance bench
- Disciplines
- Strategy · Identity · Digital · Campaigns
- Live at once
- Two projects, never three
- Languages
- English · German · Portuguese
How we take work on
-
Positioning sprint
Three weeks. Interviews, audit, one written position and the messaging around it. Often the whole engagement, and a fair test of whether we should do more.
-
Identity or system
Eight to fourteen weeks. Strategy through to a system a client team can run: type, colour, motion, naming, and the manual that holds it.
-
Launch or campaign
Six to twelve weeks. Platform, production and the public moment, built from one idea rather than four. Media planned with your buyers, not instead of them.
-
Retained
Twelve months, one standing day a week. For teams who have the system and need the studio that wrote it to keep holding the line on it.
Figures are starting points, not quotes. Every engagement is scoped in writing before anyone signs anything, and the scope is what we are held to.
Bring us the brief you have been avoiding.
Two project slots open · Berlin & New York