Play the Long Game

If you want your brand to last, pick designers with a past (mnemonic!)

Did you know that since we got our start in 2003, only six people TOTAL have worked for Curio Studio? That’s only, like, 0.2 new people per year!

Granted, we ARE a very small design group that is small by design (it allows us to take on each project as a team, and it’s easier to scale up). Still though—we are grateful to have been in The Biz for this long and to have endured very little staff turnover. And, where our clients are concerned, our longevity is a key selling point for all kinds of reasons. For instance:

ZERO DRAMA

When you’re a new designer, it can be tough not to take feedback and criticism personally. At Curio, we’ve done thousands of projects for hundreds of clients, and all the rough edges of our egos have been worn down in the process. We understand that feedback is essential to improvement, and we know better than to get too precious about our own work.

EFFICIENCY

There’s an old saw in the design community that a client can either have their work done fast or they can have it done well (but never both). Certainly, there’s a lot to be said about taking the time to do something right, but after so many hours spent making design decisions, testing them out, and learning from experience, we can deliver on some pretty tight turnarounds!

INFORMED PRICING

At Curio, each of our designers tracks their own time precisely, and we have reams of data that tell us how much time we can expect to spend on any given project. As a result, we can price our work competitively while making sure neither our work nor our bottom line suffers.

TRENDSPOTTING

Over 20 years, you see a lot of designers cash in on trends—but once the trend has come and gone, the client is left with designs that can no longer compete in the attention marketplace, and they can either live with a dated look or shell out for new work. Instead of storm-chasing, we at Curio aim for design that is both beautiful and weather-resistant.

STRATEGY

We are not svengalis and we are not life coaches. But we work hard, we’ve been around for a long time, and we build long-term relationships with our clients that allow us to understand their unique needs. Before we touch pencil to paper, we find out what their actual design problem is, and if we think there are better ways to solve that problem, we talk it out!

CONSISTENCY

This is The Big One: When your brand is presented consistently, it becomes more recognizable. It builds credibility, loyalty, and trust among the people you depend on for success. And if your visual identity is erratic or unpredictable, that trust erodes. Our longevity and our low turnover mean that Curio can be trusted with your brand today, and if you need us tomorrow, next year, or ten years from now, you’ll still be in good hands (and most likely, the exact SAME hands). 

Many of our clients (universities, municipalities, NGOs, etc.) trade on reputation. Their success relies on buy-in, and that buy-in depends on how they are presented and perceived by their audiences over time. 

And even though we’ve been at it for awhile now, we’re still motivated to do the best work we can for our clients, because we intend to do right by our friends and to make sure they are rewarded for putting their trust in us.   

This post was last updated on December 5, 2025 by Matt Steringa