Brand and identity studio, Antwerp
We give a company one color it can defend.
Naming, identity and the guidelines that hold it together. Four of us, one project at a time, from the first workshop to the day your team stops asking us questions.
- Havndal Tinned seafood #E4572E
- Kilnhouse Ceramics #F08A2B
- Solvig Bathhouse #F4A62A
- Understory Urban forestry #C7E33A
- Verdal Dairy #7BC950
- Fathom Freight software #2BB3C0
- Halcyon Sleep & recovery #3AC0E8
- Ledgerhouse Bookkeeping #4B7BEC
- Rosewater Wine bars #E64BA0
Clients
Nine companies, nine colors
Every one of them picked a color in a room with us, and every one of them still owns it.
Marks shown with permission. The colors are ours to give and theirs to keep.
Selected work
Identities we built and still maintain
The photographs come up in color when you touch them. That is roughly what we do for a living.
2023 Findable from four feet away
A tinned seafood company that kept losing to cheaper tins in badly lit aisles. We gave it the warmest color on the shelf.
- Identity
- Packaging
- Art direction
2022 A sign worth painting by hand
A ceramics studio with a shop attached, and a logo somebody had bought from a template site in 2016.
- Identity
- Signage
2024 The color of eight in the evening
A new bathhouse with no name, no mark and an opening date eleven weeks away.
- Naming
- Identity
- Wayfinding
2021 A green nobody mistakes for the council
An urban forestry charity that shared its old forest green with two municipal departments and a waste contractor.
- Identity
- Signage
2023 Milk that says where it stood
A regenerative dairy selling into shops that already had four milks, none of which explained themselves.
- Identity
- Packaging
- Copy
2024 Two hundred and fourteen names, one measurement
Ocean freight software with a working title nobody could say twice and a launch in nine weeks.
- Naming
- Identity
- Product design
The register
Every color we have handed over
We keep a book of them, with the argument that won each one written underneath, so nobody has to re-litigate the decision two years later.
The whole gamut, in the order it was made, 2017 to today.
The tin has to be found from four feet away in a badly lit aisle. Nothing else on that shelf is this warm, and warmth carries further than contrast does.
Taken off the inside of the kiln at temperature, so the color is a fact about the making rather than a preference. That is what let it survive a nervous founder.
The color of the light in the changing room at eight in the evening, matched on site with a meter and then never moved again.
The only green on that street that reads as something growing rather than as a municipal notice. Everything official nearby is darker and duller on purpose.
Sampled from the farmer's own photograph of the pasture, then pulled two steps toward yellow so it survives print on uncoated board.
The water in the dock outside their window, which is the only thing everyone in that company looks at every day.
Tested at the lowest brightness a phone will go to, in a dark room, at eleven at night. Anything more saturated stops being restful at that hour.
Confident without being a technology blue. Their clients are creative directors, and the old identity was costing them work before the first call.
Printed rather than lit. None of the three rooms would survive a neon sign, and all three of them survive a paper label.
The one hue left between our clients' blues and their reds. We took it for ourselves on the first day and we are keeping it.
We have turned down two projects because the only color that would have worked was already on this page.
Naming
One round, published in full
Two hundred and fourteen names for an ocean freight company. Here is the whole sheet, including the ones nobody will ever use, because the rejects are the argument.
- Sounder Taken in two markets
- Keelhaul Means to punish a sailor
- Bearing Died on a phone call
- Plumbline Two syllables too many
- Waypoint Four competitors already there
- Leadline Read as sales software
- Fathom
- Trimline A hairdresser in Ghent
- Harbourmaster Nobody spelled it twice
- Deadreckon Held back for the second product
- Soundings Plural names age badly
- Anchorage A city in Alaska
- Draught Spelled two ways, said one
- Sextant Beautiful, and a decade too nautical
- Berth One letter from a maternity ward
- Landfall Owned by a hurricane charity
- Coastwise A legal term, and they cross oceans
- Reckoner Sounded like a debt collector
A fathom is a measurement a person makes with their own arms, and it was the one word in the round that says depth and certainty in the same breath. It survived a bad phone line, a lawyer, a trademark search in three classes and a room of twelve people saying it out loud, which is the only test that has ever mattered.
- Say it on a bad phone line
- Spell it once, unprompted
- Clear in class 9, 35 and 42
- The .com is buyable this quarter
- Means nothing rude in Dutch, French or Portuguese
- Still works when the product changes
What we do
Six things, priced from
Most companies come to us for one of these and stay for two. Every number below is where the work starts, not where it lands.
Naming
A full round, from a longlist nobody sees to a name your lawyer has already cleared and your team can say out loud.
- Two rounds of candidates
- Trademark screening in three classes
- Domain and handle sweep
- The argument, written down
Brand identity
The mark, the type, the color and the rules that stop all three drifting in year two.
- Mark and lockups
- Type system
- Color system
- Art direction for photography
Packaging
Structure, print and the shelf test, with the printer in the room from week one rather than week nine.
- Structural design
- Artwork to die line
- Two press checks
- Dielines and print files
Digital
The site or the product, where the identity has to survive a browser, a search result and somebody's cracked phone.
- Design system
- Key screens
- Motion specs
- Front-end handover
Motion and sound
How the mark moves, and the two seconds of audio that arrive with it.
- Logo animation
- Motion principles
- Audio mnemonic
- Source files
Guidelines
The document your team actually opens, kept to the decisions that matter and nothing else.
- Digital guidelines
- Asset library
- One training session
- Six months of questions answered
Prices are in US dollars and are where the work starts. We quote a fixed fee after the first conversation, and we have never sent an invoice a client had not already seen.
Process
White in, color out
Fourteen weeks from the first workshop to the day your team stops asking us questions. This is what happens in them.
- 01
Intake
Two weeksWe sit with your team, your three best customers and the two competitors that worry you, and we write down what everybody actually believes rather than what they say in a meeting.
You get A findings note nobody argues with - 02
Position
Three weeksOne sentence about what you are, one about who it is for, one about what you refuse to do. Signed off before a single mark is drawn.
You get A written position - 03
Design
Six weeksTwo directions, both taken far enough to be judged honestly. You pick one, we take it apart in front of you and rebuild it.
You get The identity, already in use - 04
Proof
Two weeksPrint, screen, signage, packaging. We break it on purpose in the places it is going to get broken anyway, and then we fix those.
You get Files that survived a press - 05
Handover
One weekGuidelines, assets and a session with whoever runs it after we leave. Then six months of answering their questions at no charge.
You get Your team, running it
The studio
We wrote ours first
Before we ask a company for a position, we hand over our own. This is the current revision.
We are the studio a company calls when it can describe what it sells and not what it is.
Four of us, in one room on the Napoleonkaai, since 2017. We take one identity at a time, because the second one always suffers, and we would rather say no in the first email than do that quietly six weeks in.
Everything we hand over has to survive a cheap printer, a small screen and a new marketing director. If it only looks right in the presentation it is not finished, and we will be the ones to say so.
Signed by the four of us. It is not a marketing document, and we have turned work down on it twice.
Napoleonkaai, one long room, and a wall we repaint for every project.
The four of us
You will work with all of them
There is no account layer here. The people who present the work are the people who made it, and one of them will be in the room every time.
Maud Verlinden
Strategy and naming
Every naming round since the studio opened, including the 214 names on this page
Ilias Bourhim
Design director
Kilnhouse, Verdal, and the drawing of every mark that leaves this room
Greta Lindholm
Type and motion
Halcyon's product system, and the type on everything we have shipped since 2020
Femke de Boer
Production and client lead
Presses, printers, press checks, and the reason nothing here ships late
By the numbers
Nine years, counted
Figures we can show you the invoices for, which is not true of most numbers on a studio website.
Fig. 1
38identities
Shipped since 2017
Four a year, and five in one bad year
Fig. 2
4people
On the core, no freelancers
All four in the room, every time
Fig. 3
14weeks
Median brief to handover
Measured across the last twelve projects
Fig. 4
9clients
On a guidelines retainer
The oldest of them since 2018
Counted in January 2026, from our own job book.
References
What they said afterwards
Filed against the job each one came off, because a quote with no project attached is worth very little.
Havndal, packaging
They spent two days in supermarkets with a light meter before they showed us a single drawing. Nobody had ever done that for us, and the tin now gets picked up from the end of the aisle.
Mette Skov Managing director, HavndalFathom, naming and identity
We were nine weeks from launch with a working title nobody could say twice. They gave us 214 names and then talked us out of the two we liked best, and they were right about both.
Bram de Vos Co-founder, FathomUnderstory, identity
Our old green made everything we printed look like a parking notice. Two months after the change, people started stopping our crews on the street to ask what we were doing.
Lotte Prins Director, UnderstoryLedgerhouse, identity and web
We are bookkeepers whose clients are creative directors, so the old identity was losing us work before the first call. The new one has not lost us a pitch since, and Femke argued with our printer so we did not have to.
Adaeze Obi Partner, LedgerhouseQuestions
What people ask before the first call
If the answer you need is not here, write and ask for it. We answer every message within two working days.
How much does an identity actually cost?
How far ahead do we need to book?
Do you pitch for work?
Who actually does the work?
What if we already have a logo we like?
What happens after handover?
Start here
Tell us what you think you are
Pick a color before you have thought about it too hard. It is the fastest honest thing you will ever tell us, and we will argue about it later.
Received. One of the four of us will write back within two working days.
What is the one thing you would refuse to change about this company, even if it cost you money?
That is the first question we ask in the room, so you may as well start thinking about it now. There is no right answer and we have never had the same one twice.
Two slots left this year. Every brief is read by one of the four of us and answered within two working days.