Principles

We follow a relatively simple set of principles, the biggest being:

We’re not a brand talking to customers. We’re not a system talking to users.

We’re humans talking to humans, and our strength is making our humanity as obvious as (humanly) possible.

This applies in different ways to different disciplines.

We write the way humans talk

If we sound breathless, robotic, arrogant, naive, try-hardy, jokey, finger-gunny, stuffy, generated, jargony, or any type o’fake – oops, we’ve failed.

• We always want to feel mid-dialogue with our audience
• We use sentence case, cause that’s how humans write
• We’re optimistic, but realistic about the world
• We’re clever, not corny
• We’re friendly without needing to be best friends

We design like humans

If we look stock, generic, templated, corporate, cold, cheap, generated, busy, or unfocused  – dang, we failed again.

• We embrace imperfection, asymmetry, and rough edges
• We do more with less – fewer visual elements, copy blocks, colors in use, font sizes, sound design, all of it
• We add human flourishes to inhuman assets (stock and AI)
• We have our own sense of style, so things look good on us that might not look good on everyone

We design products like humans

If we feel clunky, dense, unintuitive, cold, janky, lifeless, dated, verbose, like-an-HR-product  – take a guess (we failed).

• We strive to strip away as much UI detritus as we can
• We make what remains feel airy and alive
• We design things that don’t need a ton of explanation, but we’re always ready to coach when needed