A small design studio

Design that earns its keep

Harborlight Studio works with teams at the awkward stage - big enough to need real design, small enough that every week matters. Brand, website, product: considered work, delivered in weeks, not quarters.

What we do

Engagements are scoped to the outcome, not the hour. Most projects run three to eight weeks.

  • Brand identity

    Logos, type, color, voice: an identity system your team can actually apply without calling us.

  • Websites

    Marketing sites that load fast, read clearly, and are easy for your team to edit after we leave.

  • Product interfaces

    App and dashboard design that respects your engineers' time and your users' patience.

  • Design systems

    A shared vocabulary of components and tokens so design stops being a bottleneck.

  • Art direction

    The consistent eye across everything you ship - decks, campaigns, release notes, all of it.

  • Launch support

    A designer on call for the weeks around launch, when everything somehow needs deciding at once.

How a project runs

No black box, no big reveal. You are in the room the whole time.

  1. Listen

    A first week of questions, audits, and awkward silences. We learn what your customers need you to be.

  2. Explore

    Two or three directions, shown in real situations - not mood boards, actual screens your users would see.

  3. Refine

    The chosen direction, tuned in tight loops with your team. You see progress every few days, not at the end.

  4. Ship

    Files, tokens, components, and a recorded handover your future hires can watch. We stay on call for two weeks.

What clients say

We have worked with more than forty teams since 2019. References available, and encouraged.

  • The studio rebuilt our site in five weeks and our signup rate doubled. The surprising part was how little of our time it took.

    Dana OkaforCo-founder, Kettle
  • The handover was the best I have seen in fifteen years of engineering. Everything was named, documented, and where I expected it.

    Marcus WebbStaff engineer, Moonrise
  • They said no to half of our ideas and they were right every time. The work is calmer and clearer for it.

    Priya RamanHead of product, Vantage

Questions, answered

Anything else? Ask directly - a real person replies within a day.

What does a project cost?

Most engagements land between fifteen and forty thousand dollars, fixed price, scoped after a first call. You get the number before any commitment.

How long does a website take?

Five to eight weeks, typically. Brand-plus-site runs ten to twelve. We give you a date in the proposal and we keep it.

Do you work with our engineers?

Yes, and we prefer it. Deliverables are components and tokens, not pictures of components. We speak fluent developer and join your standups when useful.

Who owns the work?

You do, entirely, on final payment. Source files, fonts (licensed to you), the repository, everything.

What if we need something smaller?

We keep two audit slots open each month - a fixed-fee, two-week review of what you have, with concrete recommendations. A good place to start.

Start a project

Tell us what you are building and when it needs to exist. A short paragraph is plenty - we will ask better questions on a call.

Where
Remote, with clients in North America and Europe
Response
Usually replies within one business day