We emptied the office for two weeks and shipped anyway.
Cover story · The studio
On 12 August the studio locked its own front door at 11 PM.
People had stayed back to empty the place themselves. Chairs stacked, systems bubble-wrapped, and somewhere in the clear-out, Saurabh's two-year-old jeans. Forty-five people walked out of a building they had outgrown and did not come back for two weeks.
The renovation had been coming. What had not been planned was what forty-five people do when the room they work in stops existing.
Saurabh Chakradhari found Gather on day one. Not day three, not the following week. Mansi Chouksey, who works remotely and knows both sides of this: "What I truly want to appreciate is, that the solution for the whole team was there on Day 1 of switching to remote, it didn't take you long. And that's the kind of thinking on your feet is unmatched."
Stand-ups happened in a virtual office. Good mornings came through screens. Coffee breaks were taken from hometowns, apartments and PGs. By 14 August the journal called it the holy grail, and by the 18th some people had started working out of the studio anyway, lunch arranged, because a virtual office is still not an office.
The work did not pause for any of it. SemiCab went live. SISA AI launched. Recursion Partners kicked off on 13 August, the day the team went remote. Ashik Arul Clement and Varsha closed a fifteen-second animation from scratch in ten hours. Nanki Arora and Nehal Sharma finished a stop-motion launch film for a book that then went to number two on Amazon.
Ekta Manchanda and Aishu designed the new space. Aishu is not on the team. She is an outside collaborator the studio has worked with before, including on TheMVP's space design, which means that when Everything Design came to design its own office it called the same person it calls for client work. Nanki drew the illustrations for the fabric divider and the wall that reads "Design your right to win".
On 24 August the office fridge sold in under five minutes. On the 31st everyone came back. Akhila Suresh had the place set up before lunch, then stood at the kitchen counter at DayOne making sure the food kept coming, and ate last.
And there is an orange door.
"so finally we got ourselves an orange door. a lot to be proud of, not just the door. always grateful to EVERYONE who helped us get here and to those who are supporting us in staying here. The privilege is hard to explain."
Five clients said congratulations on that post. Dharshan Shanthamurthy, who founds SISA. Giridhar Gorur at Grundfos. Nihar Lohiya at SuperErgo. Aakash Choubey at Becoming Quotient. Ann Thomas at Arya.ag, who has been watching and cheering the studio from the sidelines, in her words, for a long while.
At the townhall on 8 August, one phrase kept coming back. Nobody planned it. Figure it out.
Looks like we are.
Second highlight · Becoming Quotient
BQ ran as May's second highlight. It is back, because August was the month it stopped being a project and started being a thing people say out loud.
Mejo, on the appreciation board, to Sijeesh VB and Arpan Sen: "Signing up BQ have left an ever lasting impact on Everything Design and on me."
Sanjana, on the same board: "this project means so deeply to me. It heals me everytime I work on it. Definitely a very important Becoming in my career."
In August the work spread across the studio. Sanjana, Swathi and Ekta Manchanda on the brand. Samiksha S on the guidelines and variables. Tejus found an outside vendor to colour-grade the BQ photos, a capability the studio does not have in-house and now knows where to get. Felix Hartley started the mascot animation. The brand font, with the symbol built into the typeface, shipped in July.
Then the founder, Aakash Choubey, turned up in the comments on a photograph of our own front door. Mejo replied: "Aakash becoming :)"
In this issue
Launches first, then the film room, then the new work, then everything that kept moving while the building did not exist. In no order.
From the editor
We took the roof off our own head and kept working.
That is the honest summary. On 13 August forty-five people started working from apartments, PGs and hometowns because the studio was being rebuilt. On 31 August we walked back in. In between, a website went live, a launch happened, a book hit number two on Amazon, three projects signed, and a fifteen-second animation got made from scratch in ten hours.
None of it was smooth.
Bharat Atomics did not go live, and it was not our timeline that failed. The client side stopped answering. Zakia Ali's week four is blunt about it: the technical decisions were not ours to make, the confirmations did not come, and the launch slipped. That is the honest version and we would rather print it than a sentence about momentum.
PrimeWealth did not go live either. It is waiting on compliance approval, which is nobody's fault and still the fourth month we have not been able to write the sentence we said in July we would stop writing. Mansi Chouksey ran a marketing post for them anyway.
SemiCab did go live, and it is not finished. A few pages are still to come. We would rather say that than let a launch imply a full stop.
Leumas has not started. August was the selling and the scoping, and the confirmation came through in September. It is in the forecast, not the log.
Two things worth naming, both structural.
The first is that when the office disappeared the studio did not slow down, and the reason was not resilience. It was that Saurabh had a working substitute in place on day one, and Sushant is bringing structure to how the team runs, and Sijeesh VB is moving into project management to hold it together. Systems, not spirit.
The second is that we are getting better at saying what we cannot do. Tejus found an outside vendor for photo colour grading rather than pretending we do it well. Jiyash Ak flagged the LightMetrics map problem to the designer immediately instead of absorbing it. Yash pushed for a single source of truth per project after a dev handoff went sideways. Athira Krishnan inherited LightMetrics in a terrible state and said so, then got it back on track with Akshay AD and Sijeesh VB.
The phrase from the townhall on 8 August was not a slogan. Nobody wrote it on a wall. It just kept coming up, in a room with two new joiners in it, and then it kept happening for three more weeks.
Month at a glance
Sectors this month
Venture capital · AI · Investment banking · Real estate · Finance · Healthcare · Water technology · Digital marketing · Education technology · Cybersecurity · Nuclear energy · Energy · Energy technology · Electrical infrastructure · AI infrastructure · Semiconductor · Video telematics · SaaS · Logistics and supply chain · AEO · Computer hardware · Enterprise IT hardware solutions · Career growth platform · Photography · Education · Financial services · Risk and compliance
SemiCab is live. The homepage was approved and moved into development with feedback, QC and fixes fully closed out, and Yash kept it moving alongside four other tracks. A few pages are still to come, so this is a launch and not a finish. Mansi Chouksey built the contact page and the Lottie animation.
SISA AI officially launched at sisa.ai. SISA works in payment security, and the relationship runs long enough that its founder, Dharshan Shanthamurthy, turned up in the comments when we posted a photograph of our new office door.
Vecton raised 6 crore on 11 August. We delivered their website on the 12th. Vecton is a repeat client, and the relationship started with a rename: Graphik AI became Vecton, which in the founders' words made them look techy and equipped them with the right arsenal. Their brand refresh opened our April dispatch. Jiyash Ak ran Kandou and Vecton in parallel and landed both. Harishma D oversaw her first project on this one. Mansi Chouksey built the solutions page.
The Tabl explainer and the Tabl teaser both went out. Mukund appreciated the team on 7 August, and again on the 21st. This was the first project after Everything Motion and Everything Film merged, and Felix Hartley's read on it is that the team worked as one unit with very minimal to no hiccups. Quantifai have since come back for a third film.
The Armory case study film came out on 19 August and, in Akhila Suresh's words, captures the essence of what we did from the starting point, with attention to detail down to the comedic timing. It resonated in the office and with the client.
Nanki Arora and Nehal Sharma made a stop-motion launch film for Sandeep's book. The book then ranked number two in Business Communications on Amazon, number one for a week, and number one in Podcasts and Blogging. Nanki did three stop-motion pieces in August, more than in the rest of the year combined. Nehal made the props, and the pre-lease copy went out on 20 August.
Tejus wrote the initial script. The bigger decision was handing project ownership to Yugan and Sreejith Kakkat. Naveen built the site on Lumos, working with parts of the framework he had not touched before.
Signed in August. Tejus on the script: it came out quite well, not just in the content but the style and flow of the storyline, which fits the upbeat, party vibes of the brand. That is not an easy thing to get right. Mansi Chouksey is on the film and Samiksha S on the storyboard.
Also signed in August. The script runs technical in places, and that was a choice: who is watching matters more than how many.
The client liked the script enough to extend the duration and the budget of the film.
It was made against a last-minute requirement and we did not follow our own process to get it out. Tejus has flagged that this keeps happening on Ayr projects and that we need to say we cannot execute without the process.
The script is finally done, and it covers what it needs to while holding a narrative. Script, budget, recce and shoot plan are the next lock. Mansi Chouksey is on layouts, Nanki Arora on the cover compositions.
Three design frames from Nanki Arora. It goes live in September.
Tejus found an external vendor who can colour-grade for us and got the BQ photos graded. We are not equipped to do this well internally yet, and the honest fix was to go outside for it.
Shot on 27 August in their HSR office.
Kandou, Mojro, SISA, Indian VC and JP Morgan Chase all went out on the channel.
Signed and kicked off on 13 August, the day the studio went remote. Client kickoff, discovery and a two-part brand workshop, run by Athira Krishnan with Samiksha S. The Our Understanding document had to be presented at the start of the workshop.
The brand strategy workshop ran in Nagpur and went well, on 18 August. Our YouTube films came up in the room, unprompted.
Signed in August. Vignesh led it.
A repeat client after six years. The visual route was locked after a dry run that, in Mehak's words, went terrible, and was rebuilt in a day. Nanki Arora did the branding, her first in two years, and built a pattern generator so MVP can own and extend the identity themselves. Wamika worked the collaterals.
FinLender became The Decimal Capital on 10 August. The naming and narrative landed, and Zakia Ali built the visual route across weeks two to four while working from home. Athira Krishnan did the brand narrative, visual route and logo.
The technology page, contact page, homepage updates, style guide and final investor deck are all done. It did not go live. Nobody on the client side was answering emails or messages, and the technical decisions are not ours to make. Zakia Ali carried the follow-ups. Vignesh did the renders.
The most difficult project of the month. Athira Krishnan came back from leave to find it stalled with pressure from both sides, and rebuilt the platform page content from scratch across three versions, plus solutions pages for fleets, OEMs and Indian fleets. Akshay AD and Sijeesh VB got it back on track. Jiyash Ak built the page in two days and caught the map issue early rather than sitting on it.
One of the month's most important ongoing projects. Pepper's visual strategy was approved in August. Samiksha S built the variables for the brand guideline, copied a wrong base file, and had Sanjana come in and fix it. Her words: now I got a better understanding of how it needs to be done.
On 20 August it went out into a room. Pepper ran Index26, Unlocking the black box of AI search, in Bengaluru after San Francisco and New York, and the standees carried both logos: we are designing Pepper's right to win. Strategically. Verbally. Visually. The same phrase now runs along a wall in our own studio.
The month's second highlight, above. Mascot animation started with Felix Hartley, guidelines and variables with Samiksha S.
Completed by Jiyash Ak, in parallel with Vecton.
Homepage copy drafted and revised off the research. Yash on build.
Style guide and dev checklist complete, QC changes handed over. Portfolio, content and resources pages next.
Goutham Shravan rebuilt the market-cap data pipeline for the fortyseven index page over a single weekend, after several constituent values read wrong against Screener and BSE. He audited all 47 companies, traced the failure to unreliable market-cap data on some NSE names, and wired a Screener to BSE to NASDAQ overlay into the build. Friday evening to Sunday evening, live and aligned. India pages, US pages and portal updates ran alongside.
CMS fixes and solution pages, with Goutham Shravan.
Portfolio and service pages, brand book, collaterals, development QC.
Visual identity locked. The build is behind.
Wireframe and page design underway, with Yash.
Shipped same day, against a tight turnaround.
Stalled on client non-response. We have set a 48 to 72 hour follow-up cadence rather than waiting open-ended.
Maintenance continues. A brochure was cancelled after we had already put time into understanding the document, which is a lesson about confirming greenlight before allocating deep-dive hours.
Continuing with our partner Design Brewery, with Harishma D.
Joel Verghese gave his first client presentation on 5 August and it went well. Athira Krishnan took three client calls on a project she had no context on, and came away knowing she can do that more often.
New SVAM hoardings went up across North Bengaluru on 1 August.
Mini concept document done, with Athira Krishnan.
Back in action, with Arpan Sen.
Revised style and composition after client feedback. Varsha on illustration.
Progressing. Too early to reveal the details.
GSIS layouts and print. Welga Foods investor page and social. AJAX investor relations page and new product scope. Chitkara emailer. Trifecta. PrimeWealth marketing, while the site waits on compliance approval. Mojro and Neon Trumpet marketing carousels. Factors AI report two, illustrations reworked for three sections after the report was re-written. HEKA, where Naveen is running client communication entirely through chat.
Featured in this issue
And, in their own words
"All the best Mejo Kuriachan and Team!"
Dharshan Shanthamurthy · Founder and CEO, SISA · India
Inside the studio
The big one. We rebuilt the office. Two weeks remote, forty-five people, and a bigger space at the end of it. Ekta Manchanda and Aishu did the interior design. Nanki Arora drew the fabric divider and the "Design your right to win" wall. Akhilesh wrote a memoir of the space, from Mejo's house as a team of six to where we are now.
Gather became the office. Saurabh Chakradhari found it on day one of remote working. Stand-ups, meetings and impromptu conversations all moved into it. Mansi Chouksey, who is remote year-round, said it brought the team closer to the real experience than anything before it.
Structure. Sushant is bringing structure to how the team runs. Sijeesh VB is moving into project management to hold it together. Both came out of the same pressure: bandwidth across design, dev and film, and a dev handoff process that keeps starting before the checklist is checked.
What we learned we cannot do. Photo colour grading, done well, internally. Tejus went and found an outside vendor for the BQ shoot, and the cost was reasonable. Hiring video editors is also proving hard, and most applicants are not fitting on a technical level.
The nicest win. A project we signed where another agency's founder did all the selling, the whole case for what branding is and why it matters. We were the better fit on scale and connected services and we got lucky. He raised the bar and did a favour to us and to the industry.
Also this month.
What people said · August
Appreciation board. Recipient on the left, the person who wrote it on the right.
"Thankyou so much for helping me figure out the visual route for TheMVP when I was confused on how to proceed with it after the dry run."
"Sending a warm welcome to all of you. I can already see the excitement and eagerness to learn and create from each one of you."
"Thank you for all the work you do, even if it's last minute, if it's urgent, and on priority. You guys always find a way."
"Signing up BQ have left an ever lasting impact on Everything Design and on me."
"People were seeing the youtube videos, a lot of compounding."
"The ePlane Company Pitch Film. Congrats."
"At office, when I'm just thinking of the problem, I come to you to figure it out. Today, I did that again, and you showed up virtually before I even reached out."
"The meeting went well. You presented also really well. Its a small win for today."
"Insane case study video! Really captures the essence of what we did for Armory from the starting point."
"That's the kind of thinking on your feet is unmatched."
"I really appreciate the effective communication you're maintaining with the HEKA clients."
Brag board
"Page is live and aligned. All happened from Friday EOD to Sunday EOD."
"I'm always looking to solve problems with creative solutions and more often than not, I just move on to the next thing I can do, next person I can help, remove roadblocks entirely. Things like this are a big deal since I often forget to pat myself on the back."
People
New joiners. Ashik Arul Clement joined the motion and film team on 3 August. By the 20th he had closed a fifteen-second animation from scratch in ten hours. Anushka Moharana and Nehal Sharma joined the design team on 10 August. Anushka went straight into SemiCab infographic work.
In their own words
Nehal Sharma, week one: "Starting as an intern, becoming a part of Everything Design, and relocating to Bangalore. I think I've started on a slightly crazy note. But somewhere in all of this, I started understanding something about Everything Design. You are kind of thrown into things and expected to figure them out. There isn't always someone telling you exactly what to do, step by step. You have to understand the system, find your way through it, ask questions, observe, and eventually make it your own."
And: "One thing I'm actually proud of is that I've shown up every day, on time. It sounds like such a small thing, but for me, especially with everything that has changed around me, just being present and showing up feels like a good start. I am struggling with the speed right now. But I know I'm going to overcome it."
Wamika, one month in: "I don't think I've figured out what kind of designer I am or what I'm going to be good at yet. But I do feel like the things I've been doing, the things I've struggled with, the people I've spoken to and the feedback I've received are all starting to build on each other."
Akhila Suresh, on the first day back: "Back to working onsite after nearly 2 weeks. Made sure to set up the rest of the office before lunch time. Lunch was at DayOne. I myself ate after everyone else did."
Career growth presentation. Zakia Ali presented her journey at Everything Design on 12 August. Athira Krishnan did the last one, about a year ago. It is not a regular slot, which is what makes it worth marking.
On screen · August
Nine films went out this month. Tabl by Quantifai, teaser and product explainer. The Armory deeptech case study. The Story Map launch film. Snippets for Kandou, Mojro, SISA, Indian VC and JP Morgan Chase. Most of them on our channel, and the kind of thing our film practice does for clients too.
End of issue
Forty-four updates. Four things live. Three new sign-ups. Twenty-seven sectors. Three people joined. Forty-five of us now. Fourteen days without an office, and a book at number two on Amazon by the end of it.
And an orange door.
Leumas kicks off. The Grundfos whitepaper film goes live. Quantifai's third film lands. Bharat Atomics goes live if the client side answers. The rest of SemiCab ships. And PrimeWealth, still waiting on compliance.
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