The studio · Founded 2021
We are three people working out of a quiet building on Strada Vasile Cârlova in Bucharest. We have shipped forty-seven sites since 2021. We turn down most of the work that arrives, on purpose.
A note on practice
Most studios our size try to ship twenty projects a year. We ship eight. The math is simple: the client pays for our undivided attention, and our undivided attention is, like everyone’s, a finite resource. Splitting it twenty ways produces twenty mediocre websites. Splitting it eight ways produces eight that we are willing to put our names on.
We work the way a small architecture practice works. There is a brief, written down. There are two or three directional sketches. There is one direction picked together, defended in writing. Then there is a long, slow build — with the principal designer in every meeting, every review, every commit.
We are not opposed to scale. We are opposed to scale that arrives by hiring people who don’t share the practice. The studio will grow when we have found the fourth person we trust to put their name next to ours on the work. Until then, we will stay three.
If you are looking for a forty-person agency with a sales team and a kick-off slide deck, we are not the studio for you. If you are looking for the people who will personally write your home page, we probably are.
No account managers. No outsourced offshore production. The names on your invoice are the names on every email you receive.
Studio Lead · Founding
Twelve years on the agency side before founding the studio. Reads everything we ship before it is sent. Designs the front page of every project, by hand, on paper, before opening Figma. Lives in Cotroceni; commutes by tram.
Senior Engineer · 2022
A decade of front-end and CMS work at independent studios in Bucharest and Berlin. Writes the build for every project we ship. Allergic to npm packages with more than three dependencies. Maintains the studio’s open-source CSS reset.
Operations · 2024
Runs the studio’s operations — contracts, invoicing, scheduling, all the things that keep three people working calmly. Background in cultural project management. Replies to every email within four working hours.
Every project bends this. The shape is honest, not generic. We share a written timeline at brief sign-off so you know exactly what week you’re in and what you owe us next.
Week 1
A written brief, drafted from interviews with two or three people in your business. We send it back for sign-off before any pixels are drawn.
Week 2
Two or three art-directional routes, each with a sample page rendered in Figma. We pick one together. We do not Frankenstein the others into it.
Weeks 2 — 5
Page by page, with weekly review calls. The design system is documented as we go. Copy and design happen in parallel — never sequentially.
Weeks 4 — 7
Hand-built front-end, performance-budgeted from the first commit. We deploy to a staging URL within the first week of build and keep it current.
Weeks 7 — 8
Lighthouse pass, accessibility pass, copy pass. We fix what is found. We do not redesign what is not broken.
Week 8
Production deployment, DNS cutover and a 30-day post-launch tuning window. Then, optionally, a Studio Hours retainer.
If you’re in Bucharest and would like to visit, send a note. There is good coffee on the corner and we keep a bench for guests.