People sometimes talk about their surroundings / physical location influencing their design, how has being in Brooklyn affected your projects?

We take a lot of inspiration from the city. New York, and Brooklyn especially, is a melting pot of people from every possible social and cultural background. Every inch of the city is covered in commerce, from stores to advertising to people busking for change. Where there is commerce, there is design, so there is an endless amount of inspiration.

Also, we're working on a sticker pack that will take this inspiration to heart in a big way ;)

You point out This Also being a “boutique” design studio… talk a bit about the difference in your eyes between a typical agency and a boutique agency of your size. Also talk a bit about what it means in the eyes of your clients.

Our approach has been to avoid all marketing work completely and focus entirely on being a creative partner for product and engineering teams. This lets us offer clients a tremendous amount of speed and flexibility, allowing us to work as a more immediate part of their process. The clients we've seen drawn most to this approach are in the technology sector, especially teams focused on launching large scale products.

The economics of a big digital agency force them to take on large marketing projects to support their immense scale. This gives them the ability to handle big productions, but they often struggle with highly creative or conceptual projects. The greater scale attracts a lot of marketing clients, but can be slow and cumbersome for fast moving product teams.

How has the shift from working in-house with a massive company like Google to creating your own design studio changed your outlook on projects, design process, etc.

First, I loved working at Google. I was in a great team, working as hard as I could every day, and I felt intellectually challenged in every way possible. Unfortunately, Google is a place designed to make the most of your individual talents. It is not designed to foster talent in any way, and the longer I was there the more I began to miss the process of coaching and leading junior designers the way I could in a studio setting.

Leaving to start our own studio was instantly terrifying in the sense that we had total responsibility, but it was also equally exciting. We had the freedom to hire people that inspired us just as much as we wanted to inspire them, and this process taught us more than I think we could have ever learned without our own business.

Looks like you’re hiring for a Design Director and Product Designer, beyond specifics in a portfolio, what types of things are you looking for in candidates?

We're definitely trying to hire the right people for a few roles. The hardest thing is finding someone that we believe will bring something to the team that we don't already have. Everyone here is an expert at graphic design and interaction design, but everyone also has some incredible extra talent that makes them unique. We'd like to find some new folks that bring a skill we don't have already, whatever it might be.

The other thing we look for are people that can inspire the rest of the team. People who have an interesting skill set or a really friendly, motivated spirit will make a project great even when the brief starts out reading like a nightmare.

*What does the This Also toolset look like? *

We are tool and process agnostic, and we change both to fit each and every project. The common theme is being creative about problem solving, then finding tools that will express our ideas as quickly and efficiently as possible. This lets the ideas emerge naturally from anyone in the team, then we all pitch in to figure it out together.

To hint at some secret sauce a little bit, I will say that we've found that prototypes are a great starting point for video production, and we've been making more and more videos that tell big stories about what products could be. Tools for this are Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut, and good old fashioned footage with a voiceover and some sort of cool soundtrack.

Does your studio mostly do project work or do you have retainer arrangements?

Ultimately, the billing system is just a tool for us to work together with a client and solve a problem. We've worked under both projects and retainers, depending on how clear the problem and timeframe might be.

An incredibly large and indefinite product release, like rebranding a major business, often makes sense under a retainer. This way, there is constant momentum and no limits to the amount of iteration on the work. Smaller, less complex, or more contracted problems can just as easily make sense under a project basis.

Do clients typically come to you with a set budget or do you guys have to negotiate price with clients?

We try to keep all of our relationship discussions focused on the scope of our relationship. If there's an issue with the budget, we look to ways that we can rethink the amount of effort, features, or deliverables in ways that make sense for the final output of the work.

I've heard fortune 500 clients usually have strict procurement requirements regarding the size and structure of the vendors they work with. How do you navigate that as a small studio? * The credit to doing this well also goes to our business partner, Becky. She wisely brought aboard legal counsel to help us navigate all the complexities of big business contracts. Somehow it all worked out.

Do you guys have to go through RFP processes a lot where you pitch/bid against competitors?

The best relationships generally start when someone is interested in our studio based on our existing work. They usually have a small project, want a little help, and also an opportunity to get to know us. These are the best ways to get going and it gives everyone a great chance to see how productive the relationship will be.

Pitches, on the other hand, we've avoided almost completely. They're an expensive and exhausting process that can really distract from great projects people are already paying us to do. As a small team, we avoid pitches whenever we can, and we only take pitches when asked directly by the main client—it makes the process a lot more clear and productive.

We try to pair the talents of the people that work here with the talents needed for the project. We also make sure the designers compliment each others talents and can help push them all forward.

As for working with a fleet of developers, I'd say getting their opinions as much as possible, and trying to empower them with a better eye for design will help push the work forward the most.

Hey Eric, thanks for the question!

A big part of getting new business is doing a great job for your current business. We are extremely devoted to making each of our projects very successful. This helps build a good reputation for referrals, references, and general word of mouth.

When new clients come in, they usually do so with very small projects to start. Working hard on anything we take aboard, no matter the size or budget, helps build trust around the table, and eventually get bigger and tougher projects. This is a really big part of being a new studio. Just doing your best every day no matter what.

Another small part of bringing in clients is being able to show case studies. We have a few that we're getting ready to launch shortly!

Mobile and beyond has been our mission statement since day one. In part, it began as a promise to ourselves that we would focus on products and not get distracted by web and marketing projects. Reflecting on the web, it's a wonderfully powerful medium for communication, but a lot of web design is derivative of common design patterns.

Seeing beyond mobile began as just a challenge for us, to see if we could find ways to apply design to increasingly new and unique problems. New technologies, devices, and operating systems take us beyond what is "known" and open the door to solving very challenging, original problems. This is a great place to create new design patterns and have a lasting effect on the relationship between people and technology.

We originally thought it would take years before a "beyond" project was brought to our studio. Fortunately, we were doing pretty wild stuff right away. The biggest down-side of doing super rad, hard projects is the level of secrecy ;)

Hey Wesley, thanks for the question.

When we first started our studio, we took a strong stance against taking any project that we did not believe in ethically or creatively. We even agreed it would be better to go out of business than to compromise our values or our vision.

Our first few projects at the studio came from our personal reputations and relationships. We had always worked very hard to do a great job with every project, no matter what it was, and we translated that same work ethic into our studio. After we launched our first few projects, people outside of our personal circle began to notice and reach out to us for projects.

Another important thing we did was bring aboard our managing partner, Becky. She has helped us organize our creative vision and values into an efficiently run business. Her strategic planning has helped us manage a business pipeline that is extremely selective.

Of course, the price we pay for turning down projects is slower growth. We're totally happy with the trade-off and wouldn't have it any other way.

The biggest lesson I've learned is when to ask for help. When we first started, Brian and I knew next to nothing about the realities of running a business. We asked our friend, Becky, to join us as a business partner. She has been instrumental in helping us operationalize our ideas for the studio, and is a huge part of our success.

What I'd say is that it's okay not to know everything. It's actually totally cool to ask for help, or find friends that you trust who can bring different talents into your business. We have a creative vision for the studio, and having other people join us with different talents helps us all pursue that vision better.