In 2003, Curio Studio was a team of three people. By 2023, we were all the way up to four. Why did we stay small? We’re SO glad you asked!
If you own a small design agency AND you enjoy eating food on the regular, the advice you’ll hear most often is to hire more people and grow your business.
Math-wise, this makes sense: If you hire more designers, you can take on more contracts. More contracts means a bigger portfolio, therefore more exposure, therefore more work. Reinvest a portion of your profits in hiring more staff. Keep growing, on and on, in such fashion until you turn 50, sneak out the back door, and retire in comfort.
This is the model that our parents would have preferred we follow. Instead, we at Curio have over 20 years had a staff of as few as two people and as many as four at any given time. And while we may be a long way from retirement (we absolutely are), the choice to remain a small design agency has made all the difference to us and to our clients.
“Nothing great can come of more than three people in a room.”
—Legendary creative giant George Lois, in his 82nd year
To explain:
First and foremost, small design teams get to be more creative.
A design team of two or three people means more collaboration, healthier discourse, and more personal investment in our mutual success. At Curio, every designer gets briefed on every project, and every designer gets a say in the final design. In our experience, this makes for better work than the one-designer-per-project model.
Staying small means staying hungry (and that’s a good thing)!
We at Curio got into design because we love the design work more than we enjoy the design business. And, because we necessarily need to dedicate more time to design, we get lots of practice, and our work gets better and more efficient every year.
Plus, in order to get the work done, every member of the team has to put in their share of work, so we don’t just grow as designers, we grow together as people. Which is great, since:
We like people and we play well with others.
Playing with elements on an artboard is cool and all, but a good challenge is no substitute for a good relationship.
We at Curio are in the relationship business: Since 2003, over 600 different clients have trusted us with their visual identities, and each new project is an opportunity to meet new people and to see from new perspectives. So we prefer to speak to our clients one-on-one.
…Probably because we don’t like the Telephone Game.
On a big team, an idea or a message can get passed down the line from one person to the next, becoming more muddled and losing important info at every step. Our job as designers is to understand the needs and goals of the client and to make sure their message gets across as effectively as possible. So we’d rather not have middle-people between our designers and our clients—It’s more effective (and more cost-effective, to boot).
“I find the work created by small entities to be vastly superior to the work created by large entities.”
—Stefan Sagmeister, award-winning designer and typographer
Speaking of which: Staying small saves our clients money.
We don’t have extra staff to pay. We don’t have high-ceilinged office atria festooned with wacky ephemera. And we sure don’t waste a lot of time when there’s a lot of work to be done. As a result, we have fewer costs to recover. And, because time is money:
We have to stay really agile.
This comes in pretty handy when needs or situations change unexpectedly. For instance, in March 2019, people just stopped going to public performances. Entirely. Everywhere. Who’s to say why?
Since a lot of our clients work in the performing arts, all plans for the next several months (read: years) had to be re-strategized and communicated post–haste. And even though we were going through our own stuff with the pandemic, we managed to accommodate the changing needs of our performing arts clients and ensuring that somehow, the show would go on.
Having said all this, we know that big agencies serve big needs in the market, and a lot of them do it very well. One of the great things about the creative business is that there is room for providers of all size, scope, and specialty.
For Curio, it feels a lot like we’ve found our happy place as a small design agency where we can still learn new things and meet new people. And we still get to do the work with a small group of our best friends. Even after 20 years, we still believe this is better than diving into pools of cash, Ducktales-style.
Please note, though: If you are a demented billionaire and you want to arrange some sort of Brewster’s Millions situation with us, give us a call – we are willing to hear you out.
This post was last updated on March 10, 2024 by Matt Steringa