About the studio

A small studio with a long memory.

Northbound began in 2014 as two designers and a borrowed desk. Today we are fourteen people who still write the brief before we open the design software.

Open-plan design studio with long wooden tables, plants and large windows — Open room, long tables, one kettle. Refshaleøen, Copenhagen.

Ten years of saying it plainly.

We moved into a former shipyard workshop on Refshaleøen with a single table and a very loud heater. The heater is gone; the habit of working in one room stayed. Strategists sit next to developers, and the copywriter sits where she can see the typography.

We take on around ten projects a year, so every client gets the senior team from the first call to the last invoice. We would rather make four things that matter than forty that merely ship.

2014Founded at a shared desk on Refshaleøen
14Designers, writers and developers in one room
62Projects shipped, four of them shown on this site

What we hold to

Four working rules, written on the wall by the kitchen. We check new projects against them.

01
Say the plain thing first
Every project starts with a one-page brief in ordinary language. If we cannot explain the idea to a taxi driver, we are not ready to design it.
02
Fewer, better decisions
We show two routes, never a menu. Constraints make work sharper, and a clear recommendation saves everyone a month.
03
Built to be maintained
Guidelines your intern can follow, a CMS your team can edit, files named sensibly. The work should outlive our involvement.
04
Local by habit
We print, photograph and build with people near Copenhagen whenever we can. Shorter supply lines, better craft, and a lot fewer flights.

Six of the fourteen

The people you are most likely to meet. The rest of the room is just as nice, and just as opinionated.

Mette Rasmussen
Founder, Creative Director
Started Northbound in 2014 after ten years in London and Aarhus. Still draws the first logo sketch herself.
Jonas Vestergaard
Design Director
Typographer by training. Runs the Friday reviews and has opinions about kerning that he is happy to share.
Amara Okafor
Head of Strategy
Ex-journalist who turns forty pages of research into the one sentence your brand can stand on.
Anders Holm
Lead Developer
Builds fast, accessible sites and documents them so well that clients rarely need to call.
Sofie Brandt
Senior Designer, Identity
Packaging and print specialist. Knows every printer within thirty kilometres by first name.
Karim Haddad
Photographer & Motion
Shoots every campaign in daylight and on real tables. Cycles to the studio in all weathers.