MARGIT HOLL
FOUNDER / TYPE DIRECTOR
Quit an award circuit jury in 2014. Started BRUTEFORM the same week. Has rejected 312 typefaces and kept 2.
BANS: GRADIENT MESHES
OSLO — ROTTERDAM / CAPACITY: 1 SLOT, Q4
THE STUDIO — PERSONNEL FILE
TWELVE PEOPLE.
ZERO LAYERS.
No account managers, no creative directors of creative direction. The person who designs your system is the person in the room. That is the whole org chart.
OSLO■ROTTERDAM■EMPLOYEE-OWNED■NO PITCHES■NO INTERNS UNPAID■EST. 2014■
SEC. 01
THE TWELVE (SIX SHOWN, SIX WORKING)
DEAN OKAFOR
SYSTEMS DESIGNER
Builds grids the way engineers build bridges: to be ignored safely for forty years. Ex-signage, ex-rail.
BANS: OPTICAL KERNING EXCUSES
SUVI RANTA
STRATEGY
Reads your P&L before your brand book. Kills three out of four taglines on contact. The fourth survives because it is true.
BANS: THE WORD “ELEVATE”
KAREL MOSS
HEAD OF BUILD
Ships sites under 200KB or starts over. Wrote our eleven-template commerce stack. Distrusts every dependency, including his own.
BANS: HERO VIDEOS
ANA PETROVA
PRODUCTION
Schedules like a foundry foreman. Six-week timelines hold because she holds them. Has never said “circle back.”
BANS: STATUS MEETINGS OVER 15 MIN
TOMI EGUCHI
MOTION
Animates two properties: transform and opacity. Everything else is decoration with a frame rate. Cut his teeth on broadcast idents.
BANS: EASING LONGER THAN 300MS
SEC. 02
SEVEN PRINCIPLES, NON-NEGOTIABLE
01SAY IT ONCE.If the headline works, the subhead is a tax. Cut it.
02STRUCTURE IS THE STYLE.Show the grid. Show the border. Hide nothing that holds the page up.
03TWO TYPEFACES. FOREVER.A display and a mono. Every project since 2014. Constraint is the brief.
04NO SPECULATIVE WORK.We do not audition. Neither does your lawyer.
05CLIENTS GET FILES, NOT HOSTAGES.Source files, licenses, documentation. You leave whenever you want. Nobody does.
06DISAGREE IN THE ROOM.Feedback by committee is how brands die politely. One decider per side.
07SHIP UGLY BEFORE SHIPPING LATE.Then make it right. A deadline missed is the only unfixable design flaw.
OPEN SEAT — ONE ONLYWE ARE HIRING ONE
WE ARE HIRING ONE
SYSTEMS DESIGNER.
Send three shipped systems and the worst feedback you ever received. No cover letter. No portfolio site with a preloader. If your PDF is over 10MB it gets deleted unread.
SEAT13@BRUTEFORM.STUDIO ↗SEC. 03
THE RECORD
FOUNDED2014, IN A FORMER TRAM DEPOT
HEADCOUNT12. CAPPED. NOT A GROWTH STORY.
STRUCTUREEMPLOYEE-OWNED SINCE 2021
CLIENTS, LIFETIME61 COMPANIES, 9 COUNTRIES
LONGEST ENGAGEMENTHALDER STEEL, 9 YEARS RUNNING
MEETINGS PER WEEK3. ALL STANDING.
SEEN ENOUGH? BRIEF US ↗