After spending years working for in-house design teams and well-known brand agencies such as Nike, Google, and Pentagram, Joe and Leslie Stitzlein, who are also husband and wife, decided to launch their own branding studio. You’ve seen their work in many places; from launching the identities for Netflix, Mac OS X, Nike Flyknit, dwell and Lilly.
Stitzlein Studio has ushered in a new chapter for the couple who now works with a global network of independent designers, illustrators, and developers to help companies develop or expand their brands. It doesn’t matter whether it’s designing an identity or launching a new product, the founders of Stitzlein Studio are eager to share their vast experiences and take on a new challenge.
Advice for startup founders
“Be yourself, and be courageous. That is not easy, especially when you have investors to satisfy and payroll to make [we’re business owners too at the end of the day and totally get it]. We’ve seen founders try to mimic successful brands rather than spending time and energy on what makes them unique. Instead of trying to look like Google, figure out what you are and amplify the shit out of that. It’s surprising how many companies underestimate themselves when what they do is amazing. Our job is to find what makes them distinctive and pour gas on it.”
Stitzlein Studio’s branding philosophy
“Each brand has its own DNA, just as each person is unique. A company’s DNA comes to life both on a surface level by how they look, but also how the brand interacts with people in the world.”
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 Stitzlein Studio Creative Directors Joe and Leslie Stitzlein
Yvonne Leow: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and why the two of you decided to create a studio together?
Joe Stitzlein: Leslie and I had been working at a lot of different places before this. I had been in-house at Nike for seven years and spent three years at Google. There’s not a lot of opportunities to take risks in life, and we thought why not pivot from climbing the in-house ladder and share everything we’ve learned about branding with smaller startups as well as larger companies.
One aspect of our work that we really enjoy is taking a wonderful technical innovation and translating it into communications that are beautiful, helpful and inspiring. This is true for everything from a new running shoe to a new cryptocurrency; we love boiling complicated innovations down into a striking image or experience.
We wanted to take some of those lessons from the Nikes of the world, and the nonprofits and interactive clients Leslie had, and bring those to smaller scale clients. It was a fun opportunity.
Yvonne Leow: Leslie, what were you doing before you and Joe decided to join forces?
Leslie Stitzlein: I was freelancing in Portland when we used to live there, and previous to that I was working at Pentagram in San Francisco with Kit Hinrichs. I had a lot of experience working with high-tech companies in the Bay Area. When we got married, we didn’t plan on working together, but we’ve found that our skills are well matched.
Yvonne Leow: I can imagine. How do you two complement each other?
Joe Stitzlein: Well, I’m really fascinated by solving big problems, and I love systems. Leslie’s strength has always been understanding the empathy side of the relationship, which is critical because branding is always an emotional exercise, especially for smaller companies.
When you’re a founder or a small group of founders, it’s not an unemotional thing to start a company. So Leslie’s really good at understanding the founder’s motivations on an emotional level, and what problem they’re trying to solve on a human level.
Yvonne Leow: Awesome, and what type of companies do you typically work with?
Leslie Stitzlein: One thing that has been great about having our own agency is that we’re able to work with different people and companies in different industries. It’s exciting to learn new things and build relationships with clients.
As we get to know the client and their company, we can better help them solve problems. Some of our most interesting work has come from trying a new idea or application of a client’s brand that they didn’t expect.
Joe Stitzlein: Yeah, it’s true. We’re at our best when we can engage a client like we’re a member of their team. When we have that chemistry and mutual trust, we can really take something important off their plates that they might not have time to tackle themselves and work alongside them to build a brand.
For instance, our work with Cloudera began with helping them refine their design system and develop a compelling story around data science. Over time, we’ve developed a trusted relationship with their team, working as a brand innovation lab to help them with everything from their brand strategy, their overall voice to creating a new identity for them.
We also worked closely with the founders of Anchorage last year to launch their brand. Because we worked alongside them as collaborators, we developed a more intimate understanding of what are the right problems to solve for their customers.
Leslie Stitzlein: A company doesn’t have to be at a certain point in their development to work with us either. It’s more about whether the founder is ready to take on the help of a branding expert. We’ve worked with companies that are just getting started and don’t have a team.
Of course, they should have some things in place, like a product roadmap, and having funding helps too. The biggest thing is having passion for your mission, even if it’s not fully defined yet. That’s where we can help.
Yvonne Leow: A lot of designers and studios have a distinct vision for what makes good branding. What’s yours?
Joe Stitzlein: Our point of view is that brand is the company’s DNA. We think about it in two ways: there’s the way a brand is expressed; how a brand looks, how it shows up at events, and there’s also the experience and behavior of a brand that doesn’t get as much attention.
Think about when you go to an Apple store, and you have a great experience with a sales associate, that’s a behavior. Each brand has its own DNA, just as each person is unique. A company’s DNA comes to life both on a surface level by how they look, but also how the brand interacts with people in the world.”
At Nike, it didn’t matter how great the shoe was, if the shoe hurt you, it could damage your relationship with that customer for years to come. Our daughter’s cross country coach still complains about Nikes for an injury he suffered 20 years ago. You have to think about both sides of the coin for brand to make a good relationship with a customer, and that’s what we enjoy doing—going beyond the visual design and into the behavioral aspects of a company.
Leslie Stitzlein: We also always talk about living brands. We’re constantly asking how does the brand change based on its context? How does it move? How does it react to a user’s input? How does it interact with your customer to increase their trust?
Joe Stitzlein: The classic model of branding and identity was that you try to create something monolithic that would last for decades, but the context today is that our clients need something a little more rich, more interesting and made with code. We try to embrace the fact that brands should and will change over time.
It can be a programmatic mark, like we created for Anchorage, where the real need was to create an identity that embodied safety and trust in the new marketplace of crypto assets. The code-based identity is designed to work with the client at every key moment, from authenticating transactions to monitoring account activity.
When we worked with Lifetime, they asked us to create their version of the “Burberry pattern”, and we created a living pattern in Javascript that was designed to move and change like an athlete. What that means is that you can create design systems that are alive, shifting, and changing. Almost as if they’re living organisms. It’s an exciting time to be a designer if you’re willing to work like an engineer and deploy your ideas in code.
Yvonne Leow: That’s an excellent point. Do you collaborate with other folks in your studio? How big is your team?
Leslie Stitzlein: The core team is me and Joe, and we’re thrilled to be in the Bay Area, because we have a large network of designers, developers, photographers, and illustrators we work with. We also have people all over the world that help us with certain things like Javascript, coding, developing websites, and engineering. We can work very nimbly with clients and can easily scale up or down. We’ve designed everything from typefaces to events for a hundred thousand people. We believe that design systems can scale from small experiences to epic ones.
Yvonne Leow: Say I’m a founder, what does an engagement look like once we’ve decided to work together?
Joe Stitzlein: Our model is simple: we just want to work with great people and do great work. For us, having some initial sessions over lunch or in a client’s office will help us determine whether there’s chemistry between us. That chemistry is really key. It’s almost like speed dating.
Then, once we really begin the job, we’ll spend time trying to understand and define what are the right questions to answer. We’ll spend a lot of time with the founders, their core team, and ideally their customers to surface insights about what we’re working with. We always like to tell our clients that we’re trying to solve their customers’ problems not just theirs.
From there we start working on telling the brand’s story and how it resonates with customers. Then, we’ll define the visual language, which will lead to two or three different creative paths with different narratives. We, of course, work alongside our client to figure out what works and make any modifications. Since we have a lot of experience with in-house teams, we’re really good at understanding what kind of tools and stories they need to socialize our work.
Yvonne Leow: What’s your proudest accomplishment as a studio?
Joe Stitzlein: I don’t think it’s happened yet. I think we’re really proud of the work we’ve been doing, but I also think we’re very forward-looking and that the next big thing is always going to be better.
Yvonne Leow: Great to hear. Finally, what’s your payment structure for clients?
Leslie Stitzlein: We’re project-based so the most standard thing we do is understand what a client needs and write up a general scope. We request a certain amount up front, usually it’s a half or a third of the cost, a middle payment, and a payment at the end. We do have a couple of clients that we’ve done a retainer for and that’s when we have several ongoing projects and need to be checking in weekly, but due to our small scale, we haven’t had a lot of retainer relationships.
Joe Stitzlein: We’ve avoided hiring and taking on a lot of the overhead of traditional agencies simply because we love the flexibility. We want to keep learning and taking on new challenges.
Founder Recommendations
“Recently, we merged with another company and needed to develop a new corporate identity system including a logo that captured this new company. It needed to encompass the company values (which Stitzlein Studio defined and created) and help us stand apart from our competitors. Stitzlein did a fantastic job with our new visual identity system and logo. They are incredibly talented and do outstanding work with attention to detail that is impressive.” – Vice President Corporate Marketing in SF
“High follow through and attention to detail. The most exhaustive and thorough brand process I’ve been through. Joe and Leslie and their team are incredibly gifted and took us through a process that not only produced a great result but kept our heritage and need in the outcome. Would recommend them to anyone over and over again.” – Neil Ursic, Cincinnati, OH, CEO, Batterii
“Stitzlein Studio helped the Industrial Designers Society of America develop a new brand identity and narrative for one of our key programs, the International Design Conference. They worked collaboratively with our team to understand our needs and translate them into a versatile and adaptable brand system that can shift with current design trends, yet maintain a continuous thread that connects each event year after year.” – Chris Livaudais, SF, Executive Director, Industrial Designers Society of America
I don’t think I could have started my business without Joe and Leslie Stitzlein. And I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to. They were just the right blend of friend, coach, muse, and artisan.
I knew what I wanted my brand to stand for. But I didn’t yet have the right words to describe it to someone, let alone a way of knowing how it should come to life visually. Joe and Leslie helped me find my voice. They asked smart questions to draw the story out of me. And then they brought it to life in a way that made me feel truly understood.
They see the big picture very clearly. And they are truly brilliant at the small touches. The illustrations they created for my site aren’t only on-point strategically, they are simply delightful. Genius actually. The animations they created for my site and my Keynote template bring me joy every time I see them. My business cards never fail to impress.
But these guys are way more than just brilliant craftspeople. They are advocates. Advocates for your vision and, when needed, fierce advocates for brilliant design and for keeping the user front and center. I did most of the writing for my website. There was a moment when I was over-obsessing about getting the words just right. In the way that only a friend can, Joe told me it was time to move on. That it was time to put the pen down and trust that I could always improve it in the future. If not for him, I’d still be obsessing about the minutiae and would not have a site. Instead, I have a site I love and years later I consistently get great compliments about it.
I am beyond grateful that I had a chance to work with Leslie and Joe. If you get that chance, take it. It’s the best money I ever invested in my business.” – Adam Schorr, NYC, Founder, Rule No. 1 Inc.