Insights
Ideas worth building on.
Field notes from the studio on brand systems, interfaces, motion and the craft of design in the age of AI. Written by the people who do the work, for the people who commission it.
All insights
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Perspective
The brand system is the new operating system.
Generative tools can produce a thousand assets before lunch. Whether those assets build your brand or quietly erode it depends on a system most companies have never written down.
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Guide
Design tokens, explained for the people who sign off the budget.
Tokens sound like a developer’s concern. They are really the cheapest insurance a brand can buy. Here is what they are, what they cost and how to start.
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Article
Motion is part of the brand, not a finishing touch.
Most brands specify every colour to the decimal and leave movement to chance. That gap is now one of the most visible things about them.
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Research Report
Generative AI in brand production: what our 2026 projects show.
We reviewed every studio project that used generative tools this year. Speed went up everywhere. Quality only went up where a system came first.
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Guide
From first sketch to launch: running a design project that lands on time.
Most design projects that run late were late before the first sketch. A practical guide to the four stages we use, and the decisions that keep each one moving.
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Checklist
The accessibility checks we run before anything ships.
Accessible design is not a special edition for a few people. It is better design for everyone. Here are the checks every intelliDesign screen passes before launch.
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Article
Colour that survives every screen, surface and printer.
A brand colour that looks right on one designer’s monitor can look wrong almost everywhere else. Here is why it happens, and how to specify colour that holds.
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Research Report
Dashboards people trust: what we learned redesigning operational screens.
We studied how operators actually use the dashboards we design. The screens they trust are not the ones with the most data. They are the ones that hide the right things.
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Perspective
Your brand already has a sound. Is it one you chose?
Every brand that has a video, an app or a phone line is already making sound. Most have never decided what that sound should say.
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Article
Onboarding that earns trust in four steps.
The first five minutes in a product decide whether people stay. Most onboarding asks too much, too soon. Here is the shape we design instead.
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Checklist
Rolling out a new identity: the thirty-day checklist.
A new identity is only as good as its first month in the world. The checklist we use to take a brand from approval to everywhere, without the chaos.
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