A London-founded digital product studio, set up in 2004 in Shoreditch, that designs and builds apps and services for big brands and makes its own products.
Ustwo is a digital studio founded in London in 2004. It designs and builds apps, websites and digital services for other organisations and also makes products of its own. A 2010s profile in AIGA's Eye on Design says its services fall into four areas: discovery and strategy, design and build, launch and scale, and ways of working. Clients named there include Adidas, Sky and Jaguar Land Rover. Its own projects include the music platform Dice and wellbeing apps such as Pause, Sway and Moodnotes. Its games work, led by the sister business ustwo games, includes Monument Valley, which Wikipedia says has sold more than 26 million copies. This page covers the design studio, not the games business.
Two friends, Matt Miller and John Sinclair, known as Mills and Sinx, founded the company on 15 November 2004 in Shoreditch. The name comes from "us two", and they had been friends since the age of eleven. They had worked together at the design firm Big Animal. In 2015 the company renamed itself Ustwo Fampany Limited, a mix of family and company. Early projects included mobile app design for Sony Ericsson and JPMorgan. We did not find a formal mission statement, but the AIGA profile describes a user-centred approach that also weighs clients' business goals.
The Shoreditch studio in London is the company's main base. The AIGA profile says it is the largest of its offices, with other studios abroad, though the lists of those offices differ between sources (Malmo, New York and Sydney in one, Malmo, Lisbon, Tokyo and New York in another). Wikipedia puts the whole company at about 260 people in 2022. We did not find other UK offices.
On culture, the profile paints a playful place: a life-sized cow and some grass in the Shoreditch space, a ground-floor cyber cafe, and multi-day staff trips called summer holidays. Design lead Jay Chan said, "We take our work seriously but we try not to take ourselves too seriously", and described it as a very emotional company where people are encouraged to share honest views about projects. Each brief gets a mixed team where developers, designers and product coaches are treated as equals, with a short daily stand-up meeting and flexible hours. These are the company's and staff's own statements.
People in a studio like this include product designers, user-experience and interface designers, researchers, software developers, product managers and coaches, and the operations and people staff who support them. If you enjoy making apps feel simple, or want to see how a team of designers and programmers works together on one product, it is a good example. Check the website for current vacancies and for which parts of the group are hiring in London.
Website: ustwo.com
PURPOSE helps school and university students explore 62 sectors and over 1,000 entry-level careers in the UK, then connects them directly with employers.
Explore PURPOSE