Shadow to light

Two people walking out of a dark cave toward the light

  1. Perception

    Be seen the way you want to be seen

  2. Vision

    Decide what you want to be

  3. Alignment

    Point it all in the same direction

  4. Activation

    Go live and show up

  5. Nexus

    Keep it running smoothly

The Penrose triangle looks like a real shape, but it isn't. This teaches us that we perceive what we see, not necessarily what's true or real. So perception is constructed. And what looks real is often just a mirage in your mind.

So does that mean we need to lie to the world? Absolutely not. That would be a disservice to yourself, and we wouldn't want that for you. No, this isn't about deceiving others. It's about understanding how our brains work. People make decisions, thousands of them every single day, with very little understanding of how they came to them. There's a lot happening in the background that we're not really conscious of. Part of it is how you look, how you make them feel, and the impulse decisions they make in milliseconds. If you're trying to sell them something, they've already sort of decided within a second of interacting with you or your brand. So if you position yourself to be what they need or expect in that moment, they're much more likely to choose you. It's not about misrepresenting what you do. It's about representing the best possible version of it, the one that lines up with what they need, or at least what they think they need. Wink, wink.

Our mission is to help people become the best versions of themselves, and to always push for something that feels real and authentic.

Black and white macro of a human iris

If we do our job right, you're going to feel better about your life. You're going to feel proud of what you're doing. That's important to us. That's what we're trying to do: find our sense of purpose and share it with the world.

  • Pride gets a bad rap, because there's a real positive side of pride too. Pride and humility both need to be in there, because they're both important. If you can measure both in equal quantities, you can create something truly special. People can feel that you're proud of your work and that you want it to shine. But they can also feel that you're humble enough to be an honorable person.

  • People respect you when you show them respect and when you show them that you care about them. That's really all it is. As long as you show them you care, when you tell them their work isn't up to speed, it's an easier conversation to have. You want them to be better. You want them to succeed, and they can feel that. And if they can't succeed at the end of the day, maybe it doesn't work out. But you come out of that situation with kindness too, and they know you care about them and that they've been given chances.

  • We're not going to lay down for a client's bad idea just because they're the client. There has to be a balance. We're more than willing to change our minds. We change our minds all the time, and we'll be convinced by a good argument. But we're not just going to lay down because the client wants something stupid, especially if we feel very strongly about the creative direction. And part of that is that you need to sell it. You need to really sell the vision.

  • We're not afraid to think outside the box, because we know that things that look different get more attention. And if you do it right, there you go. You just blew up. It's honestly the most gratifying part for us, so we don't want to lose sight of it. We love to be creative, and we think we have great ideas that nobody ever seems to have the guts to go for. That's starting to change now.

  • At its core, it's problem solving. We're very good at it and we enjoy it, especially when they're creative, fun problems to solve. Somebody's doing great work, but the website looks like trash, and we can help them go from loser to hero overnight. That's so exciting to us. And seeing them take it and run with it is really, really quite beautiful.

  • Something we've carried through our entire careers is that we care about this probably more than we should, because we have an incredible amount of pride in our work. We want our work to be, if not the best, then at least very good. We get a lot of personal satisfaction from doing a good job, and the most important part of doing a good job is giving a damn. It's not even half the battle. It's probably like seventy-two percent of the battle.

  • We're here to build you up, not tear you down. And we have enough self-awareness to know that at the end of the day, we're doing marketing. There are people out there saving lives, doing brain surgery and sending rockets into space. We're doing marketing. It matters to you and it matters to us, but in the grand scheme of things, we don't need to be so serious. So we want to be positive and uplifting, have an infectious spirit, laugh, make jokes, have fun, and most importantly, be ourselves. Be open with the client, be personable, talk about how our lives are going. We have a client now who shares our love of vintage design. He brought his vintage golf magazine to our first meeting, and we were oohing and ahhing over it. This thing is so sick. Now we're sending each other eBay links to vintage golf stuff from the '80s. That's the good stuff right there.

Your move.