Scaling up through curation: How DIA Studio tackles big client projects

Meg Donohoe and Mitch Paone are the co-founders of the innovation and design agency DIA Studio and type foundry Monkey Type, known for redefining contemporary branding through motion, typography, and systems thinking. Since launching the studio in 2008 and the foundry in 2018, the duo has led with a collaborative, fluid approach, balancing structure and experimentation.

In this article, Mitch Paone shares how DIA Studio operates: from finding teammates for projects to discussing budgets, and touches upon their beliefs, approaches, and lessons they’ve learned along the way to success.

Parts of this interview have been edited, condensed, and rearranged by the Readymag editorial team for brevity and context.

Growing teams around ideas

Many clients are conditioned to think that larger teams automatically produce better results. However, throughout the history of design, it has often been small teams—or even individuals—who have created the most culturally impactful work. Designers like Wim Crouwel, Paul Rand, Massimo Vignelli, Josef Müller-Brockmann, and Paula Scher didn’t rely on scale. Scale didn’t define impact. Vision did.

Editor’s note: Many of these influential designers emerged during the mid to late 20th century, when the notion of “team scale” in design wasn’t yet a dominant factor. The shift toward scaled-up design production began in the 1980s and 1990s, when advertising and marketing agencies started delivering design services. This transformation introduced a new approach: bigger teams, broader campaigns, and a more commercialized take on design.

Our approach is somewhat akin to that of the band Steely Dan—perhaps a slightly dated reference, but a meaningful one. 

The band comprised two core members, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who wrote the music and then brought in the exact right musicians—some of the best in the world—for each track. Every song was custom-built with precision. That’s how Meg and I work. We lead every project ourselves and then construct a bespoke team around it based on the specific needs of the client or challenge. We don’t scale through headcount, we scale through curation.

Meg leads the managerial side of the work—she’s responsible for maintaining strong client relationships and creating a productive, frictionless environment for the team. She also has a sharp eye and a deep understanding of client expectations, so she typically has the final say when it comes to creative presentations. My focus is on the creative side. I either directly design or provide creative direction alongside our collaborators.

Big firms are limited by the talent they have in-house; our model is lighter, more nimble, and more customizable. Most collaborators we bring in are highly specialized individuals with whom we’ve built long-term relationships. Many of them would refuse to work at a large agency but choose to work with us because of how we manage projects.

Meg and I share strategic responsibilities. In our experience, strategy emerges most effectively through collaboration across the team. 

Rather than assigning it to a single role, we treat it as a shared layer of the process, shaped by creative insights from the client and ongoing dialogue as the work evolves.

Fostering project selectivity to grow capacity

We structure the studio around three core components: Innovation (internal exploration and Research&Development), Client Work, and Education. For us to take on a project, it must meet specific criteria, and chemistry with the client is just as important as the brief itself.

First, we only work through direct-to-client relationships. We rarely collaborate with ad or marketing agencies. If we do, it’s generally only for motion graphics or experiential projects—never for branding, although there’s usually a design system approach to that work. Such engagements typically occur when the budget is substantial and the timelines are sufficiently tight to make them worthwhile. Accessing high-level stakeholders, preferably at the C-suite level, is essential for our work. Without this access, the process can become diluted or unnecessarily complicated.

While we value our client partnerships deeply, we’re also not afraid to push back when needed.

Meg has a unique ability to navigate client expectations while maintaining the integrity of the work and protecting the creative space around the team. Within a clear brief, we leave room for exploration, iteration, and evolution. For us, collaborations are never prescriptive: everyone brings something meaningful to the table, and the process thrives on that openness.

Second, we don’t participate in traditional Request for Proposal processes. If a client approaches us with one, we typically decline it and instead recommend chemistry sessions and workshops so we can strategically shape the brief together based on our approach and experience.

Our process begins with informal conversations: a series of meet-and-greets where we share our methodology, internal thinking, and often work that isn’t publicly available.

We prefer to develop a scope of work collaboratively rather than reacting to one that has been pre-written. We also create space for education and innovation, which is essential for our growth. Teaching helps us stay connected to emerging talent and fresh perspectives. Our R&D—generative tools, experimental design, and technical exploration—drives our creative edge. Often, these internal projects initially attract clients: they appreciate what’s possible beyond just our past work.

Staying connected with European design

While we were initially a New York-based agency for over 13 years, we’re now based in Chamonix. We’ve built deep ties with Swiss and Dutch design education. Over the years, we’ve remained closely connected to institutions such as ECAL, ZHdK, and KABK—reviewing student work, engaging with faculty, and maintaining a visible presence. That ongoing involvement has kept us on the radar and earned the trust of a level of talent that’s incredibly difficult for most U.S. agencies to access.

The craftsmanship and design rigor emerging from these schools are exceptional. In our experience, the quality of thinking, attention to detail, and formal training often exceeds what we’ve seen from U.S. institutions. That’s not a blanket statement, but it’s a meaningful distinction. It’s why this network is so crucial to maintaining a high standard of creativity and technical excellence across our work.

Many designers emerging from these programs tend to avoid commercial work, not just because it often lacks conceptual or creative depth, but also because of political reasons. There’s a cultural skepticism toward corporate design within those circles. But we’ve been able to earn their trust by working in a way that feels fundamentally different: our projects reside in the space between progressive, experimental design and real-world brand systems.

Betting on perspectives to take a leap

The biggest mindset shift a studio needs to make to take on large-scale work lies in confidence and a willingness to leap into the unknown. Huge projects come with pressure that’s very different from working with small, culturally driven clients. You’re navigating complex business demands, stakeholder alignment, and often internal politics within the client’s organization. 

Experience helps, but at some point, you have to bet on your process and your perspective.

One of our defining moments came early on through our collaboration with A-Trak, the world-renowned DJ and turntablist. We were engaged to design visuals for his live show and create album covers and promotional materials—a complete visual language for his artistic world. At the time, we were relatively unknown, and this project gave us a platform to apply our experimental ideas to a high-visibility, culturally influential context. It wasn’t a brand in the traditional sense, but it allowed us to push motion, typography, and systems thinking in ways that laid the foundation for everything that followed.

We treated motion not as an add-on, but as an integral part of the typographic system, introducing rhythm, behavior, and responsiveness to letterforms. It had an explosive effect on the design industry, influencing how studios and brands began thinking about motion and identity. It also marked a turning point for us, drawing the attention of larger clients who saw the potential of that approach at scale.

Our kind of motion opened the door to a new wave of identity design centered on what we coined “kinetic identity,” placing motion and systems thinking at the core of brand expression.

Since then, we’ve continued to apply and evolve that approach with clients like Apple, Nike, Google, Adidas, Balenciaga, and many more. What was once experimental has now become foundational—motion branding is a standard offering across the industry. 

Working flat to skip hierarchy frictions

Within large agencies, there are often just a handful of people doing the work. The difference is structural—there’s a vertical hierarchy of titles: CCO, ECD, CD, Design Director, and so on. Such a hierarchy introduces friction. Feedback has to pass through layers, and suddenly, three or four senior voices weigh in before anything moves forward. For design-led projects, that kind of top-down structure becomes a roadblock.

We work flat. There’s no prescriptive chain of command, no daily meetings, no forced feedback cycles.

We’re just focused on making: designing, iterating, testing, and pushing things forward—right up until the presentation. We might be trying dozens of variations the day before, then come together quickly to curate what goes in. It’s democratic and fast. There’s no attachment to one idea, no creative ego, just the result. 

We’re faster, more productive, and more focused than much larger companies, because we’re deeply involved in the creative process from start to finish. There’s never a moment when a roaming creative director drops in with last-minute feedback that sends the team in a new direction. 

There are moments when being a small team has its limits, especially in the production phase. Many of our projects are motion-heavy, and when it’s time to deliver assets at scale, it can bog us down. For those situations, we have a standing partnership with the production company Brand New School. They support us on large-scale output—TV spots, commercials, and high-volume marketing assets—while we continue to lead on the system and creative direction side. Our collaboration lets us offer clients a seamless solution. Instead of having to take our design work and outsource it to a separate production vendor, risking dilution or misinterpretation, it all stays under one roof.

Talking money to avoid undercutting

The fact is that no one likes talking about money. The entire client–studio relationship would be significantly more efficient if clients were transparent about their budget upfront. However, there’s an ongoing song and dance: clients usually know what they’re willing to spend, but they hold back, hoping to see what different studios propose and at what cost. Meg handles most of our inbound business, and she could spend endless hours on meet-and-greet calls, exploratory conversations, and proposals, only to eventually find out that the client can’t afford our services. That’s not good business for anyone. 

We’re very direct about finances. We ask for the budget upfront and then give an exact estimate of what we can do with that amount. 

We’ve established a clear structure, specifically for larger commercial engagements. We charge a creative development fee at the start of the process, which enables us to invest time in thorough thinking, ideation, and exploration. Out of that phase, we develop a more tactical brief shaped by actual creative opportunity, not just theoretical scope. This doesn’t apply to more culturally driven or highly creative passion projects, where flexibility and experimentation are integral to the value. But for large-scale work, this structure protects the process and ensures we’re not working at odds with unrealistic expectations or vague parameters. We’re not in the business of undercutting—we’re here to build something strong, not scramble to fit into the lowest possible number.

Staying small by design

Over the years, we’ve been approached by some of the most established agencies and private equity firms for discussions about joining networks, mergers, or expansions, but we’ve always declined. We’ve chosen autonomy and flexibility over growth for growth’s sake and are glad we did. Expanding in that way would have meant sacrificing what we value most: our time for education, the freedom to innovate through R&D, the ability to be highly selective about the work we take on, and the flexible lifestyle that allows us to live and work on our terms.

Early on, we experimented with building a larger internal team and quickly saw how overhead pressure can distort a studio’s culture. It forces you to make decisions based on cash flow, not creative merit, and that kind of pressure inevitably compromises the quality of the work.

As agencies scale, their creative point of view tends to dilute. If you shuffled the portfolios of most large branding firms, you wouldn’t be able to tell who did what. That’s partly due to constant turnover in creative leadership and partly because the system prioritizes scale over authorship. The result is often a homogeneous and indistinct brand landscape. Studios with a strong ethos and a small, consistent team tend to maintain a more powerful, recognizable voice. 

I like to see work and know its provenance: it’s like hearing John Coltrane. A few notes in, and you know exactly who’s playing. Such an identity is rare today.

We’ve built DIA to stay small by design. Lately, however, we’ve been thinking more about what the next chapter could look like—not necessarily bigger, but possibly broader, carried forward by the right people in the right way. Meg’s leadership style, her approach to managing relationships and building trust, and my background in teaching suggest there’s potential for mentorship. Our studio’s process, system, and ethos are replicable in the right hands. However, that would require people who are not only creatively strong but also philosophically aligned. Also, we could take an entirely different path: merge with a holding company and experience what scale entails. It’s a big question we may be answering sooner than we think.