About
John Alderman designs communication experiences and strategies that bring complex brands to life. He has worked for top brands, including Charles Schwab, Visa, Disney, and McKesson. He’s published 4 books, including the latest, Designing Across Senses: A Multimodal Approach to Product Design. Alderman has been an adjunct lecturer in design thinking at Stanford University.
Sam Ward has over 25 years experience creating meaningful experiences. He has worked with global brands from Nike to Nintendo, and non-profits such as The Smithsonian and The Exploratorium. His work has been recognized with many awards, including an Edgar R. Murrow Award, an Emmy nomination, and a MUSE Award. He cofounded the first design conference for the outdoor industry, Struktur Event.
We’ve found that our meaning-led approach can be particularly useful in high stakes, highly regulated industries.
Healthcare
Healthcare systems combine compliance concerns, patient crises, and overall scale that can make communication and design challenging. Hidden within those hurdles are often kernels of opportunity and inspiration. Human-centered perspectives, fresh qualitative and quantitative research, and honest communication can draw out insights to elevate the patient and provider experiences.
Financial services
Empowered clients can be the heart of a finance company's success. Clear language and straightforward experiences can grow your clients' confidence at every step. We'll help you get there through focused research, smart content and user experience design, and accelerated prototyping and testing.
Publishing & entertainment
A discipline of knowing your audience as you work to build and shape it is useful for all brands. Alderman and Ward’s work is rooted in their early backgrounds in media, publishing, and entertainment. Working for companies like PBS, Wired, and Disney sharpened their instincts around the importance of bold thinking, and developing communication that gets noticed, remembered, and becomes part of someone's life.