Studio
Three people, one room, in Nantes
Vela was founded in 2016 by Marta Ferrand and Erwan Kerouedan. Ana Sosa joined in 2019. We have turned down the fourth hire twice, on purpose.
Why we stayed three
The first two years we grew the way studios are supposed to: a fourth person, then a fifth, then a project manager to keep the four busy. Within a year, none of us were drawing anything. We were reviewing. So we let the studio shrink back to the size where the people who sell the work also make it, and we have not moved since. It costs us the large jobs that need twenty people. It keeps the ones where the client talks to the person holding the pen.
Studio
Three rules we do not bend
01
One direction per project
We present one route and argue for it. Three options is the client doing our job, and two of the three were never serious proposals in the first place.
02
The people who sell it make it
There is no junior team behind the presentation. When something is outside what we can do, we say so and name someone who can, which is how half our work arrives.
03
You own what you paid for
Source files, fonts licensed in your name, and the right to change anything without asking us. We keep one copy for the archive and nothing else.
Where we are
9 years, same three people since 2019, 62 projects delivered, 2 projects at a time, never three.
The three of us
Everyone here draws. Nobody here only manages.
Marta Ferrand
Identity, type, print
Trained as a typographer in Barcelona, ten years in Paris before this. Draws the letterforms herself when the type on the market does not fit.
Erwan Kerouedan
Web, code, design systems
Designs and writes the front end. Believes a site that needs a rebuild after two years was not designed, it was decorated.
Ana Sosa
Editorial, packaging, production
Runs everything that ends up on paper or on a shelf. Goes on press, checks the first sheets, and argues with the printer so you do not have to.
How we work
Four facts that decide whether we are a fit, published so nobody wastes a call.
- Every project starts with two weeks of reading
- Billed as a fixed fee. If we are wrong about the problem, you find out for the price of two weeks instead of the price of a project.
- We count in days, not in packages
- An identity is 30 to 45 days over three months. A site is 25 to 40. We give the range at the start and we tell you when we are heading for the top of it.
- Two projects at a time
- Never three. The third project is the reason studios miss deadlines, and the client who booked us first pays for it.
- No pitches, no free work, no retainers
- We answer briefs in writing within two working days, including when the answer is no. What we would have spent on a pitch goes into the projects we already have.
That is the whole studio
If it sounds like a fit, tell us what you are making and when you need it.