MEMOS/ Studio

Inside the creative process: partnering with early-stage and stealth startups

☀️🍉 A lot has happened under wraps during the past few weeks. The nature of working with stealth startups is that we do a lot of confidential work that may or may not see the light of day. I always wish we could show more of the behind-the-scenes and what it’s like to be one of the creatives at Yung Studio.

Although I can’t name names, here are a few highlights:

☕️ Met with one of my current clients IRL! Probably the first in a year. We looked at Pantone chips, physical prototypes and printouts. It really felt like a luxury for a remote workspace like ours to be off our screens and in person, grabbing coffee with other human beings.
🪐 A previous client who is now starting another company for high-end customers (think Aman) reached out and asked for last-minute help on their pitch deck to get ready for an upcoming conference. 3-day sprint, boom, it’s go time. Evidently, Oprah will be there!
📦 Collaborated with an industrial design team on hardware and packaging designs, and also worked on the art direction of the product rendering and animations; also getting ready for a marketing site launch. Used an X-Acto knife and did some Fedex runs for the first time in months! It’s nice to be away from Figma once in a while. The magic is when the brand and industrial design work streams collide because that doesn’t happen often. The synergy is electric!
📣 Spoke at a webinar for a startup accelerator for the first time! A lot of prep work like research and content planning. Always wanted to know what it was like to do an engagement like this. Very different from teaching grad students.

📲 A meeting with an engineer from the client side to review the remaining app UI/UX. First batch of screens are done in 2 weeks and are ready for dev! It’s our first time designing a full app experience versus common small scale UI/animation support. How often does the brand language influence the product design systems and experience for early startups? That’s another luxury.
⏱️ We lost a pitch. We don’t do pitches in general. But when a great one comes across, we want to keep the effort as minimal as possible, like 2-day. We were the final 2, winnowed down from 30+ agencies on a project. Bummer! BUT we tried a new, scrappy RFP response format that enabled us to be super short and concise yet effective. Afterall, we were able to revamp some of our marketing language from this for other stuff. No effort wasted!
💬 More founders and founding teams are booking my office hours! I advise on all things brand and marketing for startups and my network seems to like this type of quick and lean support. May make this more official on an advisory platform one day, stay tuned…
👩🏻💻 Worked on an investor’s fundraising deck and product demos for my client to make sure the slides are crystal clear and pass the 10-sec rule! Worked on so many pitch decks and storytelling docs for CEOs and I’ve realized that it does NOT get easier over time!

One of my clients asked me why we work with mostly early startups versus well-funded companies? The fast-paced momentum and amounts of milestones we hit everyday alongside our clients are just unbelievable. Personally, I just don’t enjoy sitting in large group settings, having meaningless or condescending discussions with no real action items or progress. The worst is, when someone tries to “set the right context” for 20 mins before sharing actual work or agenda. I think I would lose my mind. Is it just me? Or do you also enjoy no B.S. working relationships?

Written on

23 Jul 2024

Written by

Melody Yung, Creative Lead