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Martin & James Est. 2017 · Brooklyn
Martin & James · Volume VIII, 2024

A Brand Strategy & Identity Studio · Brooklyn, NY

Strategic design partners for founders building enduring brands.

Martin & James is a two-partner studio. We embed at the founder level, trade headcount for judgment, and ship the kind of work that turns a Series B deck into a household name — nine weeks from kickoff to public launch.

Start a Project Read Selected Work
Founded
2017, Brooklyn
Partners
Daniel Martin & Sofia James
Next intake
January 2025
Two partners reviewing printed brand boards at a long studio table, afternoon window light.
Studio · 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn.

A note before the work

We sell judgment, not line items.

Most agencies sell you headcount by the hour. We don't. Martin & James is run by two partners — Daniel Martin and Sofia James — both formerly senior designers at Pentagram New York. There are no juniors between you and the work, no account managers routing your decisions through a layered org chart, and no scope creep disguised as a "discovery phase."

Our clients are Series A through C founders and CMOs at venture-backed companies who need a senior creative partner to define or refine their brand identity. We've rebranded 47 of them since 2017. Thirty-one went on to close rounds above $25M within twelve months of launch. We'd like to add your name to that index.

We cap the practice at eighteen active engagements per year. We refuse rush-fee-free work, we don't sell media buying or paid social, and we turn down briefs that read like RFPs. If any of that sounds opinionated, it is — and it is also why the work holds.

Read the studio principles →

The engagement, in chapters

Four chapters. Nine weeks. One founder-level team.

We run every engagement the same way we ran our first one in 2017: a senior partner stays on the account from kickoff to launch, the cadence is published up front, and the deliverable is a verbal identity and messaging playbook as much as it is a Figma file.

  1. I.

    Kickoff & Listening

    Week 1 — at your office.

    Two partners, two days, no deck. We sit with the founders, read the board materials, and come back with a written point of view on what the brand must do commercially in the next eighteen months.

  2. II.

    Strategy & Positioning

    Weeks 2 – 4.

    Category audit, competitive landscape, and a defensible positioning written in plain English. We do not believe in 80-slide strategy decks. We believe in one page the CEO can repeat from memory.

  3. III.

    Verbal Identity & Design System

    Weeks 5 – 7.

    Voice, naming architecture, logo, typography, motion, and a forty-page verbal identity and messaging playbook. Every engagement ships with the playbook — not just a Figma file.

  4. IV.

    Public Launch & Stewardship

    Weeks 8 – 9.

    Rollout across web, product, and the first board-ready press moment. We stay on for ninety days as a fractional creative partner before handing the system over in full.

Book a 30-minute strategy call

By the numbers, since 2017

Numbers a founder can quote in a board meeting.

47 Venture-backed companies rebranded Thirty-one closed rounds above $25M within twelve months of launch.
9 wks Average kickoff-to-launch window Roughly half the industry standard for a full identity system.
3.4× Unaided brand recall lift, six months post-launch Averaged across twenty-two client engagements tracked since 2020.
94% Client retention rate Over 60% of new business arrives through founder-to-founder referrals.
Active engagements per year
18 — capped by design.
Team size
14 — including two former agency creative directors.
Awards
TDC 2023 · The One Show 2024 · Brand New Top 10, 2023 & 2024.
Press
Fast Company · Inc. · The Drum · Brand New.

A short note from the partners

“We cap the practice at eighteen engagements a year not because we couldn't take on more, but because we want to know the name of every founder we work with. The day a studio starts saying yes to every inbound is the day its work starts to look the same. We'd rather be wrong about scale than wrong about the work.”

Daniel Martin & Sofia James Founding Partners, Martin & James
Open notebook on a desk with handwritten notes from a partner review.
From a partner review, November 2024.

Selected work, 2020 – 2024

Four engagements from the index.

A longer, unredacted set lives on the Work page. Below: four rows that name the company, the sector, the year, and the outcome in one line.

  1. 01 Ramp Corporate cards · Fintech 2021 Repositioned the brand around “less software,” lifting unaided category recall 4.1× in nine months. Read →
  2. 02 Anduril Defense technology 2022 Built the consumer-grade verbal identity that carried the company through its public rebrand and Series E. Read →
  3. 03 Olipop Better-for-you beverages · CPG 2023 A flagship packaging and store system for the company's expansion into 28,000 doors nationwide. Read →
  4. 04 Hims Telehealth · Consumer health 2024 Held the original verbal identity while redesigning the master logo and motion system for international rollout. Read →

Plus 40+ venture-backed companies not yet publicly named. See the full index →