Made Thought

A central London design studio, founded around 2000 by Paul Austin and Ben Parker, that creates brands, products and campaigns for clients in design, fashion and culture.

About Made Thought

Made Thought is a design studio in central London. It describes its core belief as using good design to drive behaviour, and it says it is no longer just a graphic design studio. In practice that means it works on brand identities, packaging, products, campaigns and digital ideas. It defines what a brand is for before it designs how it looks, and it follows four phases: define, imagine, refine and delivery. Its work includes Design Miami, where it has reinvented the logo each season, a long-running relationship with the paper company G . F Smith, a recycled coffee-cup paper called Extract, and the Plastic Free mark for A Plastic Planet.

Paul Austin and Ben Parker met at Ravensbourne, a London design college. After a short time at another agency they started Made Thought around 2000, working at first from Ben's bedroom. Growth was slow for the first 15 years and then picked up. In an interview with Creative Lives in Progress, the studio explained that it gives clients one recommendation instead of a menu of options, because it believes it should take a position. Its clients have included Stella McCartney, MoMA, Established & Sons and Sunspel. The interview is undated, so treat the details as a snapshot.

The studio is based in London's Fitzrovia area. AIGA's Eye on Design guide places it in Rathbone Place, in central London, and the Creative Lives in Progress interview says it chose to be close to central London rather than in Shoreditch so that clients could visit easily. It has a job board with London openings. There is no sign in the pages we read of other UK offices.

On culture, the interview describes about 45 people with only five to seven freelancers at a time, an open-plan office the studio designed itself, and standard hours of 9am to 6pm with growing flexibility. It lists private healthcare, a monthly early finish or late start, internal lectures, show-and-tell sessions, summer and Christmas events and a football team. Each year the staff take on a shared project called Made Projects, which began with a leather accessories brand. These are the studio's own descriptions of itself.

Roles in a studio like this include designers, strategists, copywriters, producers and project managers, and a managing director. The interview says it looks for originality of thought and visible passion alongside design skill, and it wants people who challenge conventional thinking. If you like both making things look good and asking why a brand exists, this is a place where those habits are valued. Check the studio's website for what it currently needs.

What they do

• {'desc': 'Defining a brand purpose and designing the look that expresses it.', 'title': 'Brand identity and strategy'}
• {'desc': 'Design for products and launches, such as the G . F Smith colour campaign.', 'title': 'Campaigns and packaging'}
• {'desc': 'Ideas such as Extract recycled coffee-cup paper and the Plastic Free mark.', 'title': 'Product and sustainability projects'}

Key facts

• Founded around 2000 by Paul Austin and Ben Parker, who met at Ravensbourne
• Based in central London (Fitzrovia / Rathbone Place)
• About 45 people with a handful of freelancers (undated interview)
• Works in four phases: define, imagine, refine, delivery

Website: madethought.com