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We are a creative agency that works in partnership with visionary brands across sectors, channels and disciplines to forge powerful connections with their audiences.


Services


Strategy

– Brand strategy
– Design strategy


Design

– Identity
– Print
– Digital
– Environmental


Creative

– Content
– Programming
– Art direction


Technical

– Product
– Website
– App


Strategy


We approach each project inquisitively, probing a client's brief, business, culture and consumer to develop the fullest understanding of context and intent. From this strategic foundation, we propose a way forward that meets the brief and serves the audience: designs, products and experiences that are both smart and successful.


Design

Craft is at the heart of everything we do – we're as attentive to a pixel as we are to a page. We are adept at creating design that engages equally with the rational and the emotional, and is rooted in both commerce and culture.

We create and roll out complete identities from marques to motion graphics, or sensitively apply and extend existing guidelines. We craft considered print materials from editorial layouts to stationery, and spatial systems from signage and wayfinding to entire exhibitions.


Content and Creative Programming

We're passionate about making good ideas work. We can originate concepts, build upon existing creative or translate it across channels. We produce compelling original content, and devise and programme events and exhibitions in their entirety.


Digital Design and Development

We're as proud of our technical fluency as we are of our aesthetic rigour. Just as with our analogue design, thought, beauty and function combine powerfully in our UX, interface design, and custom-built apps, players and websites. We can design MVPs and prototypes, integrate digital products within an existing brand framework, or create new platforms that seamlessly synthesise business and brand.


Process

Service partnership

We regard ourselves as partners to the brands with whom we work – attentive and committed to the client's business and our relationship as well as to the output we create together. Equally happy working collaboratively, we are just as invested in a project we contribute to as to one which we lead.


Strategic understanding

For each brief, we work rigorously to understand our client's business, brand and ambition, as well as their audience's needs and desires. This creates a principled strategic foundation for exceptional creative work that advances both business and culture.


Team assembly

Our studio is compact by design, but we augment our core creative and technical team with the trusted expert collaborators needed for each particular brief. From developers to directors, producers to writers, the careful composition of each team relates precisely to what's required.


Principled design

Our intention is always to create improvement through design: better experience, clearer understanding, richer connection, cultural evolution. Rooted in modernist principles but never backward looking,, we dispense with the decorative in pursuit of finely balanced form and function.


People

Our studio is deliberately small – our founders are involved in every project and work directly with clients. This approach affords us great flexibility: for each project, we assemble the exact team required, drawing on talented, trusted collaborators from a vast array of disciplines.


Dr Peter Kapos – Partner and Strategic Director

With a background in fine art and philosophy, Peter's fascination with the convergence of function, aesthetic and experience now informs his strategic work on behalf of Systems Studio's clients. As well as creative strategic direction, he also writes, curates and teaches for various institutions and organisations, including Raven Row Gallery, Braun+Design Collection and Industrial Facility. Peter is also one of the world's foremost collectors of, and authorities on, iconic designer Dieter Rams' work.


Giorgio del Buono – Partner and Design Director

Classically trained and a passionate proponent of the principles of the Swiss School, Giorgio's design is distinguished by being both meticulously considered and finely crafted. Commended by the International Society of Typographic Designers, Giorgio's practice is remarkable for its attentiveness to both form and function. Previously at Cartlidge Levene, he has produced much-admired work for cultural clients such as Herzog & de Meuron, Tate Galleries, the Design Museum and Quarter Verlag, as well as consumer brands including Moleskine and John Lewis.


Michal Polak – Partner and Design Director

Innately technical and systematically minded, Michal's design is notable for its clarity and restraint. Drawing equally on logic and intuition, he elevates user experience to an art form, whether through  wayfinding, typography or interface. Prior to co-founding Systems Studio, at Cartlidge Levene he delivered major projects for Tate Modern, Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, and Hong Kong's M+ Museum. He is also a musician, photographer, and Systems Studio's resident technophile.


Rachel Steed-Middleton – Managing Director

With experience on both agency and client sides, Rachel is skilled at creating, communicating and capitalising on noteworthy brands. Having transformed brands in sectors spanning financial services, transport, security, FMCG and retail, her innately strategic approach fuses cultural analysis, audience insight and business acumen. Having previously held senior roles at Winkreative, Fenwick, Anomaly and Leo Burnett, she now has oversight of Systems Studio's development.