Tell us about the studio: Who are the founders, how many employees, where are you based, what’s your speciality, any details you’d like to share.
We are WØRKS, a multidisciplinary team of designers, strategists and creative directors based in New York City. WØRKS was co-founded in 2018 by Haris Fazlani and Marc Moran. Shortly thereafter, Joe Perez came on as a partner, and Roy Cranston, our lead designer, rounds out our leadership team. Since then, we’ve fluctuated in official head count, but right now our core team is six people. We specialize in strategy, creative direction and design with a focus on cultural impact.
What is the story behind the name of the studio?
The name WØRKS is an ode to the Deutscher Werkbund, the precursor to the Bauhaus in pre-war Germany. The Werkbund was a collective of multidisciplinary artists, designers and architects that aspired to elevate everyday life. We’ve always been inspired by the movement, and the name WØRKS felt like a natural fit for its municipal, utilitarian and pragmatic feel.
Which topics or industries are you most passionate about and focused on?
We are less interested in specific industries and more focused on values. Our aspiration, regardless of discipline or vertical, is to elevate the perspective of a given project through a more intentional, artistic and emotive approach. We enjoy working in and around contemporary culture because it’s often tied to emotions. Through thoughtful strategy and great design, with culture as our medium, we can cut through the noise of everyday life and impact an audience on a deep, emotional level.
One example of this is the brand we created for Mineral, a new age hemp-based wellness brand. At the time, all hemp brands looked largely the same — often featuring hemp plant imagery and a sort of low brow aesthetic. Strategically, we used brand codes associated with boutique skincare and beauty brands to legitimize Mineral’s product offering and thus hemp-based products at large. Elevating the brand helped to elevate the category and bring trust to a new form of wellness.
Do you listen to something or play music while working?
We all love music. But we’re an incredibly opinionated group of people — we can never all agree on what to play in the office. We’re AirPods people at heart who aren’t afraid to interrupt one another’s private music session when we want to chat.
How does the team wind down or spend quality time together?
We have a few traditions — the most prominent of which is our daily morning call. Every day, our team starts the day together in communal discussion about current affairs, new industry developments, and things we’ve been enjoying.
It began during the pandemic when we needed a way to check in remotely and stay sane in the mornings, and over time has become a strong part of our culture. It has evolved over the years, but it remains one of the primary ways we stay close to one another and aware of what’s going on in the world.
Team members who have been with us for any period of time often tell us how our morning calls are one of the things they miss and cherish the most from our time working together.
What’s the hardest thing about running a studio?
The hardest part is putting all of our effort into the work for our clients, nurturing our team and into running the business. Everything is a fight, and everything somehow demands 100% effort. So we end up putting 400% effort into things, which doesn’t seem possible or sustainable - yet we keep managing to do it. We fight to get more work, we fight to get things out on time, we fight against low standards, and we fight to get 1% better each day. It can be hard in the moment, but it certainly compounds in big ways given enough time and enough collective effort from the team.
What’s the best thing about running a studio?
The best thing is also the hardest thing — the challenges make everything worthwhile. Aside from that, it’s the most salient and dense learning experience one could ask for. Every day we’re learning — whether it’s about creativity, business, leadership or operations. We’re fortunate to be able to tap into a variety of different industries with our clients. It’s fulfilling to look back at a year of work and see that we’ve worked across fashion, sports, music, sustainability, technology and more. We’re able to carry these learnings forward into every new project.
Who would you love to collaborate with, or have as a client?
We don’t really have ideal or dream clients, but we do have ideal values, and we’re always looking for clients that would like to be partners in pursuing those values.
We like to work both wide and deep, and be as far upstream creatively with our clients as possible. This enables us to work across disciplines and get to the root of creative problems quickly.
Our comprehensive rebrand for Virgin Music is a great example of this. We were able to come in at a very early stage of the creative process and collaborate on a strategy, manifesto, tone of voice and brand value system that reinforced Virgin’s differentiator: a history of disruption and a rebellious, artist-first approach to the music business. This process then informed the audacious visual identity we created and resulted in a much more potent, yet simpler messaging system.
When was the last time you said ‘no’ to a new client or project and why?
Our instinct is always to find ways to make things work, to focus on what can be done versus what can’t. Ultimately when we do say no, it’s most often due to value and belief misalignment.
What's the best advice you can give about working with clients?
We believe our client projects are true partnerships. Often the problems we work on don’t have easy or straightforward answers, and require a great deal of digging deep with clients to uncover the roots of the problems they’re looking to solve. It’s our job as creative and design professionals to make sure we’re solving the right problems, managing expectations and being cognizant of both the client’s preferences and what’s best for the final audience of the work.
As mentioned before, we have strong opinions. It’s important to have and be able to communicate a perspective through every stage of the process, while still working alongside the preferences of clients and other stakeholders.
Find ways to stay equally energized through the beginning, middle, and end stages of a project. We do this by beginning to think about the case study when we’re rounding out the final phase of a project. For us, showcasing and sharing the work is one of the most rewarding parts of what we do.
Where would you like to see the studio in 5 years?
There are many amazing possible futures we talk about, but there’s a balance between blue-sky thinking and being realistic with the opportunities we have in front of us. We feel that our job, every day, is to take the best possible next step. We don’t want to let the rigidity of a “5 Year Plan” get in the way of making the right decision, today, right now. With that being said, we do have a few short term goals. We’re excited at the prospect of the younger members of our team growing into leaders in their own right over the next few years. We’re interested in doing more work outside of North America, and we want to create at a higher, even more multidisciplinary level, deepening our impact across the board. More than anything else though, we want to continue to learn every day. New mediums, new methods and ways of seeing enable us to be the best partner for our clients and the best environment for team members to grow.
Thank you WØRKS!
