About
Business first,
design second
Our first meeting skips the brand story. We ask how much you want to grow this year and where things are stuck.
There are no awards or team photos on this page. What’s here is what we’ve done, how we take on projects, and the kinds of projects we can’t take.
01Eight years, one question
That job came down to four questions, every day: who are we selling to, what problem does it solve, why us, and what does success look like. Design came after all four had answers.
Founder of Muzi Studio. Spent eight years at Google and YouTube, all of it on how products go to market: product marketing in APAC, and the channel consulting program for YouTube in Greater China. Now works between Taipei and Tokyo.
Business Senior Product Marketing Manager, Google APAC (current)Platform Partner Manager at YouTube, led the Greater China channel consulting programBrand Project designer at Red Peak in New York, on rebrands for major international companiesEngineering 15 years of building websites
02The first question is always your business
Sometimes, once we’ve asked, the answer is to leave things alone. Once, the pricing sheet itself was fine and the sales process was what was stuck. Another time the website was fine, but nobody could tell where to start reading. Both times we said so plainly and introduced them to the right people.
This takes up about a third of a project. Looking back afterward, it’s also the part clients mention most.
We do eight things, in three groups: figuring out what to build, building it, and making sure people come across you.
03Three disciplines, one plan
Hiring separate people for brand, website and content makes some sense. Each one is an expert in their area. But then the work of joining the three together falls to you.
We put brand, website and content in one plan, and the same team sees it through.
The usual wayUsDesign from A, website from B, content from C. Each is an expert in its area.All three are in one plan, so nothing has to be handed between them.Three calendars, and you’re the one lining them up. Handoff days are when projects most often go wrong.One team on one schedule, with no waiting on outside replies. That’s what makes a two-week sprint possible.There’s a layer of retelling between the person you talk to and the person doing the work.The people who listen to you are the people doing the work. No one has to pass it along.
Colors and type are written as tokens, and the guidelines and the website read from the same file, so the designs and the code never disagree. You also won’t see “we’ll need to check with the engineer” on a quote.
04The trade-offs, up front
With a small team, there are a few things worth knowing before the first call.
CapacityWe can only take on a few projects at once. There’s no project manager layer, and the people you meet are the whole team. When we’re full, we’ll say so instead of taking the work and figuring it out later.No subcontractingIf something comes up on our end, we’ll give you a new schedule. You choose whether to wait, or end the engagement and settle up for the work already done. We won’t hand you off to someone you’ve never met.We need you thereThe two weeks of the Anchor Sprint need you involved. If you leave every decision to us, the result will look more like ours than yours.Where we areTaipei and Tokyo. We work online and meet in person when needed. Chinese, Japanese and English all work.
Where we stand
Four positions, continuing the numbering above.
05We start with your growth goals, not a brand story
A project that starts with the brand story ends up, two months later, with a narrative that reads beautifully. Then nobody can say what it has to do with customer count, conversion rate, or average order value.
We work the other way around.
01How much do you want to grow this year? Customers, price, retention, new markets, or funding?02Where are things stuck right now?03Does that part actually need design?
Sometimes the answer to the third question is no.
06We deliver rules you can check yourself
Brand projects rarely fail outright. More often, once they’re finished, nobody dares touch them. Three months later marketing needs a new social size, or an engineer hits a button state the guidelines don’t cover. The files are all there, but no one knows why that corner radius is 8 and not 12. So people guess, and the brand slowly drifts. Or they come back and ask us, which means you’re locked in with us.
So what we hand over is the four things below, and you can check every one.
Token fileA JSON file with the colors, type sizes, spacing and geometry constantsGeneratorA program that builds every visual asset from the tokensCraft rulesRules written out in plain words, so you can check them one by oneValidatorThrows an error if an asset has been edited by hand
Every asset is generated, so you never get “we changed the color and missed one image.” Change one token value and everything is rebuilt.
The cost is a slower start. It only pays off in one situation: the brand will be in use for years, and by more people than just you.
07Where we use AI, and where we don’t
We use it.
Where we use itResearch, competitor scans, cleaning up transcripts. Mistakes are easy to spot, and we can run it again.Drafts and variations while we’re exploring. There are a lot of them, and most get thrown away.First drafts of documents and guidelines. It’s structural work, and editing is faster than writing.Where we don’tPositioning calls and choosing a direction. That takes understanding your situation, and your description of it isn’t enough.Final quality and detail. For now, it still takes a person to see the gap between looking right and being right.Our commitments and responsibility to you. When something goes wrong, someone has to answer for it, and that can’t be handed off.
08We don’t hand over anything you can’t edit yourself
After a brand project is delivered, it’s common to have to go back to the original agency for every change. We make “you can edit it yourself” one of our acceptance criteria.
Every page opens directly in the editor. Changing a color doesn’t need anyone: change one token value and the identity assets and the website update together. Need a new size? Follow the written rules and you can make it without asking anyone. If something does get changed the wrong way, the validator flags it before it goes live.
We still take maintenance contracts.
Signing one will be up to you.
Book a 30-minute call
It’s free. In the first meeting we ask how much you want to grow this year and where things are stuck.