01 / Independent design studio
Brand and product design for companies with something to prove.
AmbitioStudio is a six-person studio in Amsterdam and Lisbon. We build identities, websites and product interfaces — then hand them over as systems your team can run without us.
Two project slots open — Q1 2027
Working with Vantage Mutual, Kestrel Robotics, Halcyon Health and Ferro Coffee Roasters.
Teams we have shipped with
02 / Selected work
Four projects, and the numbers that came out of them.
Specimen 01
2025
Vantage Mutual
Financial Services
Rebuilding trust in a 40-year-old insurer
A ground-up identity and quote flow for a mutual insurer whose customers were abandoning applications halfway through.
+38%
quote completion rate
Specimen 02
2025
Kestrel Robotics
Hardware
A brand system for a robotics company that ships weekly
Kestrel shipped faster than their brand could keep up. We built a system their own team could extend without us.
3×
faster asset turnaround
Specimen 03
2025
Halcyon Health
Healthcare
Turning a trial platform into software clinicians open daily
A dense clinical trial tool re-architected around the four tasks research nurses actually perform every morning.
+52%
weekly active clinicians
Specimen 04
2024
Ferro Coffee Roasters
Hospitality
An identity for a roaster opening forty cafés
One roastery became a national chain. The brand had to scale from a single chalkboard to forty storefronts.
40
locations rolled out
03 / Capabilities
Five things we do, and what each one costs to start.
Brand Identity
from €18k
Positioning, naming, marks, type and colour — resolved into a system your team can run without a designer in the room.
Positioning platform · Logo & marks · Type & colour system · Brand guidelines · Launch assets
Websites
from €14k
Marketing sites built in Framer, handed over editable. Fast to load, easy to update, honest about what they need to convert.
Sitemap & copy direction · Design · Framer build · CMS setup · Analytics & handover
Product Design
from €22k
Interface work for software people use at work — where clarity beats delight and every extra click costs someone an hour.
Discovery & interviews · Flows & IA · UI design · Prototypes · Engineering handoff
Design Systems
from €20k
Component libraries, tokens and the governance to keep them alive after the launch announcement.
Audit · Token architecture · Component library · Documentation · Team training
Art Direction & Motion
from €9k
Photography direction, illustration and motion that make a brand look like it was made by people, not a template.
Art direction · Shoot production · Illustration · Motion principles · Asset library
04 / How we work
Three phases. Fixed fee on each. Stop after any one.
01
2 weeks
Definition
Interviews, audit, positioning. You get a two-page brief we both sign before any design starts.
02
3 weeks
Direction
Two routes, presented live, argued properly. One gets chosen and refined; the other is retired.
03
4-8 weeks
Design
The system gets built in full — every state, every breakpoint, documented as we go.
04
1 week
Handover
Files, tokens, guidelines and a working session with your team. Then thirty days of support.
05 / The studio in numbers
Small on purpose. Booked on purpose.
10
years designing for regulated and technical industries
6
people in the studio — no account managers, no handoffs
94%
of clients start a second project within 18 months
2
active projects at a time, maximum
06 / What clients say
The reviews we would have written ourselves, but did not have to.
“They asked harder questions in week one than our last agency asked in six months. The quote flow they rebuilt paid for the whole engagement inside a quarter.”
Hanne Vos
Chief Marketing Officer
Vantage Mutual
“We ship every week. AmbitioStudio built us a system our own designers could extend on a Tuesday afternoon without emailing anyone.”
Dele Adeyemi
VP Product
Kestrel Robotics
“Our research nurses stopped complaining about the software. That has never happened before in my career.”
Priya Raman
Head of Clinical Operations
Halcyon Health
“Forty cafés, one brand, and not a single argument about which version of the logo to use. That is the whole review.”
Tomás Ferro
Founder
Ferro Coffee Roasters
07 / Journal
Notes from inside the practice.
Practice
Why we price design in phases, not hours
Hourly billing rewards slowness and punishes experience. Here is the phase model we switched to in 2021 and what it changed for clients.
6 min read
Practice
The 90-minute kickoff that replaced our 40-page brief
Long briefs are a record of a conversation nobody had. We replaced ours with six questions and a whiteboard.
5 min read
Craft
Type systems that survive the handoff
A type scale is not a list of sizes. It is a set of rules a developer can apply without asking you anything.
8 min read
08 / Questions
Answers before you have to ask.
Anything not covered here, write to us directly — we answer every enquiry within two working days.
How do you price a project?
What does a typical engagement cost?
How long until we see something?
Do you work with in-house teams?
What happens after launch?
Who actually does the work?
Tell us what has to be true in twelve months.
Send a paragraph about the project, the deadline and the budget range. If we are not the right fit we will say so and point you somewhere better.