A director’s eye,
a maker’s hands,
a founder’s clock.
I’m Elise Ferrand, and I design brands. For twelve years I did it inside large European tech companies and the startups snapping at their heels, and I noticed the best work always came from the smallest rooms.
So I left, and built Ferrand Design Office around a single rule: the person who hears the brief is the person who does the work. No account managers translating, no juniors learning on your budget, no handovers where the idea leaks out. Just a creative director with a laptop, a short calendar and twelve years of taste.
No layers. No waiting. No theatre.
Forty-odd brands shipped, from pre-seed decks to products used by millions, all from one desk.
Pocketful
Quorum
TESSEL
Halo
nestegg
What I believe
Feeling is the strategy.
People decide how they feel about you in a second and justify it later.
Speed is a form of respect for a founder’s runway.
Distinctive beats polished, and honest beats both.
Nobody ever loved a brand that was designed by committee.
Taste is a muscle, not a gift, and it needs daily exercise.
If it doesn’t work on a napkin, it won’t work on a billboard.
Kindness in the process shows up in the work.
Make it feel like someone made it.
A few nods along the way
Iberian Design Prize, Identity 2024 · Atlantic Identity Awards, Gold 2025 · Tagus Type Awards, Honourable Mention 2023 · Lisbon Creative Honours, Independent Studio 2024
Values I work by
In their words, not mine.
“We had spent a year describing Juniper Club as ‘networking, but kinder’ and hating ourselves for it. Elise gave us a brand that sounds like the room we were trying to build, not a comparison. Members noticed the shift within a week of launch.”
Mara Lindqvist
Founder of Juniper Club
“Branding a tool that generates brands is a trap, and I knew it. Elise walked straight into it and came out with a system that is strict enough to be ours and loose enough to be fun. Two weeks. I still don’t fully understand how!”
Tomás Reyes
CMO at Tessel
“Every fintech brand looks like a bank that went to a festival. Elise refused to make ours one of them. Pocketful finally looks like something you would send to a friend, which is the entire product. Our first paid campaign converted at double what we modelled.”
Priya Natarajan
Co-founder of Pocketful
“We needed Quorum to feel exclusive without feeling smug, which is a narrow road in crypto. Elise found it. Invitations went out and the replies came back within hours, from people who normally take a month to say no. That is what a brand is for.”
Jonas Weber
CEO, Quorum
“Our users are eighteen and terrified. Elise never once suggested making the brand ‘young’, which every agency had. Instead she made it honest, warm and a bit funny, like a good older sibling. Applications on the new site went up forty per cent in the first month.”
Aisha Bello
Co-founder of Rung
“I was braced for the usual four-week wait before seeing anything. Elise showed us a direction on day three and it was the one we launched with, almost untouched. Our investors asked who the agency was. Telling them it was one person in Lisbon was a pleasure.”
Felix Marchetti
Co-founder of Nestegg
Notes from the desk
Elise Ferrand
@ferrandoffice · Follow
A founder asked today whether two weeks was ‘enough time to think’. I said thinking is what the two weeks are for; it is the other ten that agencies spend on meetings. She booked. I should probably write that down somewhere visible.
6:00 PM · Oct 6, 2026
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Elise Ferrand
@ferrandoffice · Follow
A founder asked me what makes a brand feel expensive. I said space, patience and one good typeface used with conviction. Then I showed her a menu from the café downstairs. It cost nothing and looked like a hundred years.
6:00 PM · Aug 19, 2026
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Elise Ferrand
@ferrandoffice · Follow
Rule I keep relearning: if the logo needs explaining, the explanation is the logo. Took a wordmark back to three letters today after a week of adding things. Better, lighter. The client said it looked ‘obvious’, which is the nicest thing anyone can say.
6:00 PM · May 27, 2026
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Elise Ferrand
@ferrandoffice · Follow
Rain all week, which is fine for kerning. Finished a pet health identity by drawing the paw mark forty times until it stopped looking like a logo and started looking like a paw. Nobody will notice. That is the point.
6:00 PM · Feb 11, 2026
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Who you’d
be hiring.
Everything a founder asks on the first call.
Why not just hire an agency?
Where did you work before this?
Why Lisbon?
What kinds of founders do you enjoy most?
Do you take equity?
What happens after the project ends?
