Build the brandsthe algorithm can’t fake.
A small studio, hiring for taste. We back creative directors, designers, writers, and AI producers who’d rather codify the 1,000 small decisions than crank decks. If you’ve been waiting for a studio that takes craft seriously and ships in public — we probably built it for you.
Four principles. No exceptions.
We hire taste, not credentials.
Show us a thing you made that you're still proud of. Three years out, ten years out — fine. Resume is fifth on the list behind portfolio, manifesto-fit, references, and a 30-minute working session.
Compounding craft, every cycle.
Every person here writes one line in learnings.log a day: what they made, what they learned, what's 1% better tomorrow. If you can't articulate growth, you can't compound it.
Agents draft. Humans decide.
We use AI agents aggressively for the procedural surface around taste. We will never ship taste work an agent produced unsupervised. If that excites you, this is the place. If it scares you, that's also a fit.
Brand-fit beats availability.
We don't backfill seats. A wrong hire taints the cycle for everyone on the brand. We'd rather leave a seat open for six months than fill it with someone who almost fits.
Six roles open.
Forever, sort of.
We keep these doors open even when no seat is technically vacant — because the right person is rarer than the right time. If you’re a fit and we’re full, we’ll start a conversation now and find each other when the seat opens.
Creative director (brand)
You'll own a brand end-to-end. Persona, gesture grammar, drop pipeline. We back your taste with a system that catches you when you're wrong.
Designer (visual + product)
Strong typography, restraint, and a portfolio that's clearly yours. We don't hire generalists who can ship anything — we hire specialists who refuse to.
Copy + brand voice
You write like a person. You can hold an entire brand voice in your head across thirty drops without it drifting. You delete more than you keep.
Photo + moving image
You shoot taste, not assets. Comfortable in linen-light minimalism and willing to break it for the right brand. Your moodboard is the application.
AI producer
You build the lane between human taste and agent execution. Prompt-cached pipelines, rubric-scored drafts, observable agents. The OS work is your work.
Studio ops
You make the cycles run. Briefs → drops → public tests → ratchet. Without you the compounding stops. You quietly love spreadsheets that nobody else opens.
The job is to get
1% sharper every day.
Most agencies bill hours; we bill cycles. A cycle is one full turn of the loop: read the customer, codify the gesture, ship the hypothesis, capture the learning. The loop runs once a day, forever. Every person on the team is responsible for one visible line in learnings.log by EOD — what you made, what you learned, what’s 1% better tomorrow.
You will write a lot, in public. You will be asked to grade your own work and then watch a peer grade it independently because we don’t trust self-grades (see failures/self-grading-simulation.md). The system is more honest than the people in it — that’s a feature, and you will come to love it.
There’s no Slack culture of urgency theater. There’s no calendar of standups about standups. There’s a brief, a rubric, a drop, a public test, and a learning. If that rhythm sounds like a relief, we’re the place.
One short form.
One honest reply.
We read every application. If we’re a fit, you’ll hear back inside a week with a 30-minute working session — not a culture screen, an actual creative call on real work.
Start the application→Koino Studio · creative direction OS
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