The Working Assembly began as a side hustle. Jolene Delisle and Lawrence O’Toole juggled full-time jobs while collaborating on projects for startup clients, and they eventually realized there was an opportunity to help companies with branding, marketing, and advertising. In the past four years, TWA has grown from a team of two to a team of twenty in NYC’s Flatiron district. We spoke with Creative Director and Partner Jolene Delisle about their start, their new initiative 24-Hour Assembly—a branding program for minority and women founders, what makes an ideal TWA client, and why she’s excited about the new frontier of experiential and immersive branding.
On common founder mistakes:
“Clients often come to us and say, “I love the branding of this.” And we’re like, “Well, that’s not really your target. It doesn’t really make sense for you as a brand.” And I think it can be hard for founders to separate their own personal aesthetic from what is actually going to be most effective for their business.”
On TWA’s core values:
“There’s an opportunity when you start your own business to be able to pick your clients, and we started working with a lot of female-founded startups right away. Zola and TheSkimm are both led by women founders. We developed a natural passion for working with these types of companies. It helps that our team is also comprised of mostly women, which I think is really outside the norm. For us, we really focus on diversity and inclusivity. It’s a core tenet of our company and an integral part of the conversation.”
“TWA is great at collaborating, ideating, and executing brand identities. They have outstanding taste, beautiful design skills and understand the marketplace well.” Michael Wayne, LA, CEO, Kin
Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup brand designers and agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.
Interview with TWA’s Creative Director and Founder Jolene Delisle
Yvonne Leow: Tell me a little bit about your backstory. What led you down this path of design and branding?
Jolene Delisle: So, I have more of a background in advertising and communications, and my founding partner, Lawrence, has a background in branding. In the beginning, we were both working full time, but we would collaborate on projects for startup clients. We eventually realized that there was a need to create branding elements before we could ever develop a marketing strategy so that became the impetus for starting Working Assembly
We’re a relatively new studio. We have about 20 people full time. We’re based in the Flatiron district in NYC. And we work with emerging and evolving brands. The emerging brands are startups. About 40% of our clients are early-stage companies that have either received some kind of angel investment or are pre-series A. Sometimes, founders come to us when they don’t even have a name yet, but they have a great idea and a core MVP. Other times, startups are growing very quickly, and we’ll build out their brand and create additional assets.
We also started an incubator last year called 24-Hour Assembly, specifically offering minority or women-owned early-stage startups with foundational branding. We’ve found these two groups are often underserved and underrepresented, especially when it comes to raising money, so we want to provide early-access support as they prepare for investor conversations. We do two projects a quarter at a reduced rate fee of $10,000.
The other category of clients we have is evolving brands. Last year, we rebranded Guardian Insurance, which is an almost 200-year-old company. The year before that we rebranded MassMutual, which is a big financial-service company. I think both startups and established companies are looking for branding that feels like it’s going to last. Emerging brands are hoping to build something that feels very foundational that they can build upon for years to come. And evolving brands also want to apply that same ethos and agile approach.
Yvonne Leow: What inspired you to create 24-Hour Assembly?
Jolene Delisle: I think what really inspired me was that I worked in the advertising industry, which was very male-dominated. There’s an opportunity when you start your own business to be able to pick your clients, and we started working with a lot of female-founded startups. Zola and TheSkimm early on, which are both led by women founders. We developed a natural passion for working with these types of companies. It helps that our team is also comprised of majority women, which I think is really outside the norm. Over half of our company is minorities as well. For us, we really focus on diversity and inclusivity. It’s a core tenet of our company and an integral part of the conversation.
Yvonne Leow: That’s awesome. Does TWA have a specific expertise?
Jolene Delisle: One thing that’s really interesting is that clients will come to us when they’ve already done some core branding. We’re able to help build on that with advertising, social, content, etc. We’re also really focused on what we call modern brand building. We don’t think branding is just your logo and visual identity. We’re doing experiential activations for clients. We’re doing anything where we think a consumer is really interacting with your brand, whether it be a pop-up shop or a campus ambassador program. Those are all branding touch points for us, and so clients will come to us for what they might not necessarily consider branding but is foundational to what they are doing.
In terms of our specialties, we have a lot of experience with millennial female brands, consumer packaged goods, B2B and large enterprise services.
Yvonne Leow: If I were a founder approaching TWA, what kind of advice would you give to someone who’s deciding between going with an agency versus a freelance designer?
Jolene Delisle: I would say to really think about what your needs are. One thing that clients really benefit from coming to us is that our strategic thinking involves our senior leadership. The fact that we work closely on every brand really helps kind of give you a rounded-out branding experience versus going with a singular person who might have a singular aesthetic and maybe a singular POV. I think always having as many people as you can champion and want to help you craft your brand as possible is always going to yield a bigger success.
Yvonne Leow: That’s good to know. What’s your ideal client relationship? What qualities do you look for, particularly in an early-stage company?
Jolene Delisle: We get a lot of inbound inquiries from early-stage startups, and it’s really hard for us to decipher who will be a great partner. I think one of the things we look for is whether they’re doing something that feels really new and unique. There was a time when we were getting a lot of companies in the direct-to-consumer market, and a lot of the products they were building were similar to what was already out there. And so we really like to look for that clear white space and how can we help them tell their story.
Relationships we find to be powerful are the ones where we have a natural alignment and affinity for what they’re doing. Branding, especially at the early stage, can be like getting into a relationship. It’s part therapy as much as it is about brand development. There are so many components, from an emotional, outlook, and creative level, that have to come together. So it’s important for us to establish those relationships, especially since we’re a small team and my co-founder and I oversee every project. We’re highly involved. We’re only able to take on a certain amount of projects at a time so we look for brands that we have a natural akin to.
Yvonne Leow: What has been your favorite project or client in recent years? What went well between them and TWA?
Jolene Delisle: One client relationship that I find really special is Sarah Lee. She’s the founder of Bombfell. She originally engaged us do branding for one company that was doing well but needed help with positioning, brand strategy, brand identity work. Through that relationship, we formed a natural friendship and a real trusting relationship. She came to us again when she was ready to start another company, and we helped with naming, brand identity and development. It really shows what’s possible when branding companies and founders have a good, natural collaboration.
Yvonne Leow: That’s fantastic. What do you think are some common branding mistakes entrepreneurs might make?
Jolene Delisle: One thing that happens often is founders will see something out in the market and get really excited about it. Maybe it’s not within their vertical or audience, but they think the branding is really great. Sometimes the hardest part is trying not to mime or look like something that’s already out there. Clients often come to us and say, “I love the branding of this.” And we’re like, “Well, that’s not really your target. It doesn’t really make sense for you as a brand.” And I think it’s really hard to separate their personal aesthetic from what is actually going to be driving their business.
Yvonne Leow: I’m curious what’s your branding process like for clients?
Jolene Delisle: We do brand strategy for all of our projects. Regardless if there’s been any strategy or competitive research done previously, we always start with some sort of strategic work, just as a foundation. Then we move quickly into visual design and verbal identity design.
Our process is that we meet with clients twice a week, which is a lot, and we either meet with them remotely if they’re out on the west coast or sometimes in person if they’re in New York. We also set up a daily communication touchpoint, more specifically a shared Slack channel. It’s an easy way for clients to access us and for us to share ongoing work.
The industry is moving so quickly now that things change all the time on the client side. So to be able to have immediate access to creative partners and to be able to provide updates as they happen has been imperative and helpful for everyone. It’s great to have that level of communication so they feel like we’re a part of their team.
Yvonne Leow: What do you like or dislike about working with entrepreneurs?
Jolene Delisle: I love working with people who are passionate about what they do. You start a business so that you can work really hard for yourself and not work for someone else. And I think that’s very similar to why we started TWA. We really loved the idea of being entrepreneurs.
The hardest part is that it’s really challenging. I don’t think people really understand how hard starting a business or a product or building a company is. It requires someone who is able to go through the ebbs and flows and be able to adapt and accept the challenges that come along the way. And sometimes it can be frustrating. Some early-stage companies adapt and change so much that sometimes they lose sight of what they were building in the first place. So I would just say people should definitely start their own company, but make sure that you have a clear vision of what it is and stay true to that.
Yvonne Leow: What kind of emerging technologies are you most excited about when it comes to the realm of branding or marketing or advertising?
Jolene Delisle: I think it’s exciting is that consumers don’t interact with your brand the same way that they used to. Traditional branding of logos, packaging and retail design are shifting so much, and it’s really exciting to think about all the different ways that people are going to be finding and discovering brands. It’s really becoming more immersive.
When I worked in advertising there was always a conversation about how people don’t want to have ads served to them, but at the end of the day, people still make commercials and people still make content that has advertising in it. People enjoy it because they’re getting something that has entertainment value.
It’s the same thing for branding. People don’t want to be branded towards, but if it’s something where they feel like they’re interacting with your brand and getting something out of that experience, I think that’s where it can be really successful. So I think that’s where immersive branding is really exciting because you’re able to create brand worlds that consumers want to be part of.
Yvonne Leow: Finally, what’s your rate and fee structure for startups?
Jolene Delisle: We do project-based work, but we started 24-Hour Assembly because we realized that not everyone could afford our traditional fees and creative fees. We scale based on how early-stage clients are versus if they’re a later-stage company. We also do ongoing retainers and branding fees with certain clients. We’ve taken equity in a couple of companies, but we always do a fee and equity structure. We also offer co-locations where members of our team who have worked on your brand actually work out of your office for two to three months, or sometimes as long as six months, to help you scale and grow your team.
Founder Recommendations
“The Working Assembly started with a blank slate to create a brand for my start-up business with an energy, relevance and visual beauty that far exceeded my expectations at the outset of the partnership. I provided a basic but thorough initial brief as an input and was impressed with TWA’s approach to follow-up probing and exploration. Their probing drove substantive evolution to my brief and unlocked not only powerful insights to inform the brand identity development, but also unlocked powerful insights as it relates to my overall positioning and approach to business development. The TWA team is also a pleasure to work with and I truly leave their (beautiful) office with an energy boost every time I get to visit. In summary, I’ve been thrilled with my experience with TWA to date.” – Amy Hatton, NYC, Principal and Managing Director, Wednesday and Co
“TWA has been instrumental! They have worked on photoshoots, branding, look books, ad campaigns.” – Jennifer Spector, NYC, Director of Brand, Zola
“The Working Assembly team is working with me on the launch of a Mommy & Me brand and have nailed every aspect of our brand development thus far. They have very successfully translated my client’s vision into a visual and voice system that speaks to our target customer. On top of their creative talent – they are great communicators and incredible at time management.” – Partner and EVP of Marketing in NYC
“They really took the time to understand our needs as a business. Did their research on businesses in same field as mine. They really accentuated our brands core identity- made it stronger. Easy to work with. Very detail oriented. I’m extremely pleased with the work that they’ve done. Their work is helping my business grow!” – Aditi Malhotra, NYC, Founder & CEO, Tache Artisan Chocolate
“The Working Assembly works great as a creative team, but they also remain true to realistic deadlines and the scope of initial work. It is very crucial as a startup to trust a team that will produce amazing work but also stay true to the calendar as well as stay within budget. With this being said, TWA went above and beyond our initial scope, free of charge because they personally felt that the project didn’t feel quite right without another round of adjustments. They mentioned many times they didn’t want to pass off a project to us where they didn’t feel a 100% in the outcome. They want us to succeed just as much as we do. They helped us create our logo, brand guideline, and graphic device. I believe that the biggest success we had when worked with TWA was that they translated our complex brand concept into a simple, digital forward visual system that is easily digestible for our consumers to understand.”– Meghan Herman, NYC, Co-founder, HarperSage
“Remesh was founded in 2014 and as the company grew and evolved, the brand began to appear disjointed and lacking clarity especially as many different designers worked on it. Among the issues that we struggled with as a company was the lack of visual cohesiveness across channels, we looked scrappy and not professional, and we struggled in defining what we do or what the platform does.
When I joined the company, my task was to build a visual identity and brand voice that lives up to the altruistic mission of the company of creating a platform that accurately represents the voice of the people. I immediately connected with Jolene at TWA, and she understood the need and we hit it off in our discovery call. It was just great to connect with another designer who gets you and bounce ideas off. TWA worked through the rebranding effort in an agile process that I was familiar with. They dedicated a week or so for every aspect of the brand identity and we always started with a kick off call, transfer of knowledge and we regularly gave feedback on their work until we had a deliverable that we were comfortable with. Three months later (crazy timeline), TWA was able to deliver a new Remesh and it’s exactly what we all were looking for.
We now have a humane visual identity that puts people and truth at the forefront of the brand. They were able to hit the right spot between expert and friendly. At the end of the project together, we had a brand book, a guide on how to speak about the company and what we do, and a fully designed and built WordPress website. I have to say one of the most appealing things about working with TWA is their visual style but more importantly, is their collaborative environment. I was part of the rebranding process from start to finish and I participated in sprint style design critiques of mood boards and web designs.” – Amr Thameen, NYC, Product Designer, Remesh
“The Working Assembly masterfully refined Bombfell’s aesthetic. They took multiple nuanced elements of our business and crafted them into a sophisticated brand identity. As a DTC company, our branding is the first, primary, and most important point of consumer interaction. The Working Assembly understood this and created a thoughtful visual narrative that communicates what our brand stands for. In addition to being excellent creative partners, they’re collaborative, kind, nimble, and helpful people who established an amazing rapport with our team and partners.” – Rana Abu-Ghazala, NYC, Director, Creative, Bombfell
“TWA is great at collaborating, ideating, and executing brand identities. They have outstanding taste, beautiful design skills and understand the marketplace well.” – Michael Wayne, LA, CEO, Kin
“They redid our logo (WayUp.com) and helped us craft our new brand identity.” – Liz Wessel, NYC, Co-Founder & CEO at WayUp
“From just a name and a mood board, Jolene and The Working Assembly team created an actual brand, a living and breathing voice as if it were magic.
TWA provided me with a full brand book + labels for my cans. They also went out of their way to do product photography, and mocks of marketing collateral (e.g. company swag), which really helped me see the Sanzo brand live in a variety of ways.
TWA has been a brand partner, an extension of Sanzo in ways I can’t begin to describe. Sanzo wouldn’t have been able to launch without the dedication of Jolene and the team.” – Sandro Roco, NYC, Founder, Sanzo
“TWA’s greatest contribution to our brand was bringing our brand messaging to life. Our branding stands out in a sea of sameness, while remaining trendy and current. I think my favorite asset they delivered was our wordmark – we are in love! As a bonus, they are the most delightful, efficient, and communicative team you could hope to work with.” – Startup executive in NYC
“Visual Design of Brand” – A founder in NYC
“TWA has done one complete design re-brand, and another brand creation project for our company. They are extremely strong in storytelling and visual branding and helping a brand come to life. They do nuanced work that is elevated and approachable at the same time.” – Sarah Lee, NYC, Co-founder, Bombfell
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