01About
A studio built around the unglamorous half of interface design
The states nobody draws, the specs nobody writes, the migration nobody plans. It is the part that decides whether the work survives a roadmap.
02Our story
How we got here
Baseline Studio started in 2017 with two designers, one contract, and a shared irritation: the gap between a design that looked finished and a product that actually worked. We had both spent years watching beautiful screens fall apart the moment they met real data, real edge cases and a real engineering timeline.
So we built the studio around the unglamorous half of interface design. The states nobody draws. The specs nobody writes. The migration nobody plans. It is less photogenic than a hero shot, and it is the part that decides whether the work survives contact with a roadmap.
Nine years on we are a small, deliberately senior team working with product companies in transit, health, finance, retail and developer tooling. We take on a handful of engagements at a time, because the alternative is a studio where the people who pitched the work are not the people who do it.
We work remotely, anchored in Lisbon and Toronto, which covers enough of the clock to sit in your standup and still review a build before the day ends.
- Founded
- 2017
- Team
- Six designers, all senior
- Concurrent projects
- Three, deliberately
- Working hours
- Lisbon and Toronto overlap
- Typical engagement
- Seven to sixteen weeks
- Sectors
- Transit, health, finance, retail, dev tools
03Values
Six things we actually do, not six words on a wall
These are the arguments we are willing to have, and the ones that shape how every project runs.
- 01
Count before you argue
Almost every design disagreement we walk into has an answer sitting in the product already. How many buttons are there. How many people used that tab last month. How many taps is it really. We count first, because a number ends a debate that adjectives will not.
- 02
Draw the unglamorous states
Empty, loading, partial, error, offline, permission-denied. These are the screens users meet on their worst day and they are the ones most often left undesigned. We treat them as part of the work, not a follow-up ticket.
- 03
Design against the build
Engineers join our reviews from the first week. A design that has never been pressure-tested against the codebase is a wish. We would rather find the constraint in week two than have it discovered in week ten by someone else.
- 04
Accessibility is not a phase
Contrast, focus order, keyboard paths and screen reader behaviour are decided while the screen is being drawn. Retrofitting them is more expensive and always worse, and it is the reason so many products meet the standard on paper and fail in use.
- 05
Adoption is the deliverable
A design system nobody uses is an expensive file. A redesign nobody ships is a portfolio piece. We plan for the migration, the workshop and the awkward second month, because that is where the value either lands or evaporates.
- 06
Say the difficult thing early
If the brief is aimed at the wrong problem, the useful moment to say so is week one. We would rather have a hard conversation at the start than deliver something polished that quietly does not help.
04How we run a project
Five stages, in this order
The same shape whether the engagement is a three-week audit or a four-month design system.
- 01
Orient
- Product teardown
- Flow inventory
- Agreed success measures
- 02
Frame
- User flows
- Wireframes
- Scope agreement
- 03
Draw
- Screen designs
- Component definitions
- Responsive behaviour
- 04
Prove
- Interactive prototype
- Test sessions
- Findings memo
- 05
Ship
- Redlines and specs
- Handover session
- Two build reviews
05Where we are
Remote, but overlapping with your day
Remote studio, anchored in Lisbon and Toronto. Between the two we cover enough of the clock to join your standup in the morning and review a build before your day ends.
What we are like to work with
- Weekly reviews in the open, not a month of silence followed by a reveal.
- Your engineers in the room from week one, because constraints found late are expensive.
- Fixed scope and fixed fee, agreed before we start. Changes get priced before the work, never after.
- The designers who pitch the work are the designers who do the work.
05Start a project
If this sounds like the way you want to work
We take on three projects at a time and we are honest about capacity. Tell us what you are building and when you need it, and we will tell you straight away whether we can help.
- Prefer email
- studio@baseline.design
- Current availability
- Taking on two engagements for the coming quarter.
- Typical reply time
- Two working days, from a partner rather than a form.