Specificity over versatility.
Generic systems serve nobody well. We design for the exact person, the exact context, the exact moment. Usefulness and beauty emerge from specificity.
Studio Form · Est. 2014
Form
follows
feeling.
We are a small, obsessive design practice. We build spaces, identities, and experiences that hold their shape under scrutiny — and quicken the pulse of the people who encounter them.
The chronicle
Ten years of
considered work.
-
2014Origin
A studio is born in a borrowed kitchen.
Mara Solis and Jonas Feldner, then strangers at a type conference in Zurich, discover they share the same obsession: that most designed things are either beautiful or useful but rarely both. They begin taking clients under the name Studio Form from a shared apartment on Ludlow Street.
-
2016First major client
The Venn Hotel rebranding changes everything.
A full brand identity for a boutique hotel group — 14 properties, one coherent voice. The project demands rigour at a scale we had not attempted. The result is awarded a D&AD pencil and attracts the clients who would define our next decade.
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2018Growth
We move into a proper studio and hire our first team.
With three senior designers, a strategist, and a developer, Studio Form outgrows its kitchen and takes a light-filled space in Red Hook, Brooklyn. We adopt a principle that governs us still: never more than eleven people at once.
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2020Pivot
A year of stillness produces our most enduring method.
The pandemic empties our studio and fills our thinking. We formalise the Form Method — a structured approach to brand discovery that has since become the backbone of every engagement. Slow down the beginning, we learn, and everything after accelerates.
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2022Recognition
Fast Company names us a World Changing Design firm.
Our work for Meridian Architecture — a wayfinding language for low-vision users now installed in transit systems across seven cities — is cited for combining craft with measurable human impact. We are proud, and a little uneasy. We prefer the work to do the talking.
-
2024Now
Ten years. The same obsession. Bigger tools.
Studio Form today works with a select list of clients — cultural institutions, independent hospitality groups, architects, and a handful of founders building things that genuinely need to exist. We are not interested in volume. We are interested in work we will be proud of in ten more years.
What we believe
Five principles.
No exceptions.
Restraint is a creative act.
We remove before we add. Every element on the page earns its place. The things we choose not to include are as important as the things we do.
Durability over novelty.
We build for the long view. Trend-chasing ages the work before the ink dries. Our clients commission us once and return a decade later with the same brand, still thriving.
The maker's hand.
Even in a digital practice, craft is physical. We sketch, model, print, and hold before we finalise. The body knows things the screen cannot tell you.
Candour over comfort.
We tell clients when an idea is wrong. Not aggressively, but clearly. We were hired for our perspective; withholding it is a betrayal of the brief.
The people
Small by design.
We have been eleven or fewer for a decade. Not because we cannot grow, but because eleven is the number at which everyone in the room still knows why every decision was made.
Mara Solis
Co-Founder · Creative Direction
Trained in type and editorial design in Buenos Aires before a decade at Pentagram London. Mara shapes the voice and visual philosophy of every project that leaves this studio.
Jonas Feldner
Co-Founder · Strategy & Systems
Jonas holds a Masters in cognitive science from ETH Zürich and spent seven years at McKinsey's design practice. He ensures every beautiful thing we make also works in the real world.
Risa Oda
Senior Designer
Motion, interaction, and the space between pixels and screen. Risa joined from Tokyo's Takram and brings a rigour to craft that has elevated every project since she arrived in 2020.
Theo Pryce
Creative Technologist
Theo writes the code that brings our most ambitious ideas to life. He has an irritating habit of saying "that's actually quite straightforward" before producing something nobody thought was possible.
"We are not interested in the applause. We are interested in the moment — three years from now — when someone encounters our work and has no idea it was designed at all. That it simply had to be that way." — Mara Solis, Co-founder
Work with us
We take on four
new clients a year.
We are selective because we need to be present in the work. If what you are building requires genuine attention and a long view, write to us. We read every message.