Heliograph
Independent design & technology studio — London & Lisbon
Heliograph is a twelve-person studio building brands, products and the design systems that hold them together — for companies that intend to matter, not just to launch.
Trusted by teams at
Client names shown: Halcyon Bank, Northgate Foundry, Ember & Ash, Solstice Health, Vellum Press, Kestrel Mobility, Atlas Provisions, Fable Interactive, Lantern Public and Orrery Labs.
What we are for
We close that gap. One team handles the strategy, the identity, the interface and the code that carries them — so the promise on the homepage survives contact with the product.
148
Projects delivered since the studio opened in 2014
31
Countries our work has shipped into
94%
Of clients start a second engagement within a year
12
People, two studios, and nothing sent to subcontractors
The difference
None of these are innovations. They are just the parts that get dropped when a project runs late — which is exactly when they matter most.
Every engagement opens with a week of interrogation. Roughly a third of the time the problem you brought us is a symptom of a different one, and we would rather find that out before the estimate than after.
The person drawing the component and the person shipping it are in the same standup. Nothing gets designed that cannot be built, and nothing gets built that quietly abandons the design.
Weight budgets are set in the first week and reviewed in every critique. A hero video that costs you two seconds of load has to earn those two seconds — usually it cannot.
Contrast, focus order, motion preferences and keyboard paths are checked in the same review as the typography. Retrofitting them at the end is how you end up with a second, worse product.
Working files, tokens, repositories and documentation transfer on the final day. No licence to renew, no retainer required to keep using your own identity.
A single shared channel and a named lead for the whole engagement. No account layer translating between you and the people doing the work.
Services
Most engagements use three or four at once. They are listed separately because they are costed separately, not because they happen in sequence.
All services in detailNaming, positioning, identity systems, typography and the verbal language that keeps them consistent when we are not in the room.
ExploreResearch, information architecture, interaction design and interface craft — from a first prototype to the hundredth release.
ExploreMarketing sites and storefronts your marketing team can actually edit, built on a component library rather than a pile of one-off pages.
ExploreA motion language with rules rather than a folder of effects, plus photography direction and the launch film that introduces both.
ExploreTokens, components, contribution rules and documentation — the boring infrastructure that decides whether the brand survives its second year.
ExploreCategory analysis, customer interviews and positioning work that produces a decision, not a deck that everyone agrees with and nobody uses.
ExploreSelected work
A cross-section rather than a highlight reel — a bank, a foundry, a restaurant group, a transport network, a publisher and a laboratory.
All twelve case studies
A retail bank rebuilt around one idea: show people the number that actually matters. Identity, app and design system in eleven months.
A 90-year-old metal foundry, repositioned for architects rather than contractors.
Nine restaurants, one system, and a booking flow that stopped losing people at step three.
One component library across 42 markets, six languages and three platforms — and a largest-contentful-paint that fell from 3.1s to 0.9s.
A referral tool for clinicians, designed around the ninety seconds they actually have.
Eleven instrument lines given one visual grammar, so the catalogue finally read as a company.
Case studies
Four engagements with the numbers the client measured afterwards. Drag, scroll or use the controls.
Eleven months from first workshop to public launch: a new identity, a rebuilt mobile app and a design system shared by four product teams. The onboarding flow lost eleven of its nineteen screens.
A ticketing platform serving 42 markets had drifted into 42 designs. We consolidated it into one library, cut the CSS payload by three quarters, and wrote the contribution rules that stopped it fragmenting again.
Nine restaurants that had been operating as nine brands. One identity system with room for each room, plus a booking flow rebuilt around the two decisions people actually make: when, and how many.
A civic service used by people in a hurry and often on old devices. We designed for a 3G connection and a five-year-old Android first, then let everything else inherit the result.
In their words
They spent the first week telling us our brief was wrong, which was annoying and completely correct. The version we launched is not the one we asked for and it is significantly better.
Eleven product lines, one grammar. Our sales team stopped having to explain that we were a single company. That is the whole return on the project, and it arrived in month four.
We had worked with two larger agencies before. The difference here is that the people in the kickoff were the people in the handover. Nothing got quietly reassigned to someone junior.
They cut three quarters of our CSS and then wrote the rules that stopped us putting it back. Eighteen months on, the system has not fragmented. I did not expect that.
Public-sector procurement is not a fun room to be in. They turned up with evidence, made the accessibility case in plain English, and got a sceptical committee to a unanimous yes.
Engagement models
Three ways in. All of them month-to-month with 30 days’ notice, all of them include the source files, and none of them include an account manager.
One focused track — a brand refresh, a product surface, a site. Two of us, dedicated.
£6,500/ month
Billed monthly, 30 days’ notice
A full studio team embedded with yours: strategy, design and front-end together.
£14,500/ month
Billed monthly, 30 days’ notice
Multi-team programmes, long horizons, and the governance that comes with them.
Bespoke
Scoped after a discovery call
All prices in GBP, excluding VAT. Full comparison and procurement answers
Questions
If yours is not here, ask it directly — hello@heliograph.studio.
Usually three to five weeks. We run two engagements at a time per team, which is the honest constraint behind that number — we would rather tell you about a wait than pretend a project is fully staffed when it is not.
Discovery can often start sooner, because it needs fewer people.
Alongside, almost always. Roughly two thirds of our engagements are with companies that already have designers. We tend to take the parts that need concentrated time — a system, a rebrand, a difficult surface — while the in-house team keeps the lights on.
You do, on final payment — including working files, tokens, repositories and documentation. We ask only for the right to show the work publicly, and we will hold that back for as long as you need.
We build front-end: markup, styles, component libraries, motion and the integration into your framework. We do not take on back-end architecture, and we will say so early rather than subcontract it quietly.
Thirty days’ notice, either direction, no exit fee. Everything produced up to that point transfers to you. We have used it twice in eleven years and both times it was the right call.
Both studios are real rooms and we prefer to start in one. After that, most weeks are remote with a day on site every fortnight if you are within a few hours of London or Lisbon. Travel beyond that is billed at cost.
The journal
Essays on practice rather than thought leadership. Roughly one a month, published when it is finished rather than when it is scheduled.
Read the journal
Clients rarely misdescribe what they want. They misdescribe why they want it — and that is the sentence worth rewriting.
Onboarding is not a funnel. It is the only time a person will read anything you write, and most products spend it on a tour.
A component library that is pleasant to look at and unpleasant to use is a liability with a good screenshot.
Next step
A short note is enough to start. We reply to every enquiry within one working day, and the first call is a conversation rather than a pitch.
