Design & Development Studio
We help early-stage startups turn rough ideas into real, well-made digital products.
Litos is a small design and development studio that partners with founders from pre-seed through Series A. We cover product design, website design, brand identity, and front-end development — in a single, fast-moving team that operates on a subscription model, project basis, or as a fractional embedded partner.
The early product and brand decisions you make in the first twelve months have outsized influence on everything that follows — how you raise, how you sell, how you hire, how you scale. We exist to make those decisions well.
What we do
Eight disciplines. One studio.
We keep the scope tight so the team stays small and the quality stays high. Every service we offer is one we do continuously — not a side capability added for completeness.
01
Product Design
From early concept to polished UI — we design product experiences that are clear, functional, and built for real users. Includes flows, wireframes, prototypes, and production-ready screens.
02
Website Design
Marketing sites, landing pages, and full web presences. We handle strategy, design, and development so you get a site that communicates your value and performs under scrutiny.
03
Brand Identity
Logos, colour systems, type, tone, and brand guidelines. We help early-stage companies build an identity that can scale — not just a first impression, but a consistent system.
04
Graphic Design
Decks, social assets, campaign visuals, print collateral. The kind of design that makes written content look as considered as the ideas behind it.
05
Mobile App Design
iOS and Android interfaces designed to platform conventions while retaining a distinct visual identity. From user flows through to dev-ready specs.
06
UI/UX Audits
A structured review of what's not working in your current product or site. We identify friction, inconsistency, and missed opportunities, then give you a clear improvement roadmap.
07
Pitch Decks
Investor and sales decks that communicate your idea with clarity and conviction. We shape both the narrative structure and the visual execution.
08
Design Systems
Component libraries and documented design systems that let your team move faster without losing visual coherence. Covers tokens, patterns, and governance.
How we work
Three phases, built to overlap.
Most design processes separate thinking from making. We collapse that gap deliberately — research informs design while design is happening, and development starts before design is finished.
Phase 01
Onboard & Research
Every engagement starts with understanding — your business goals, your users, your constraints, and the competitive landscape you're operating in. We ask the kind of questions that surface the real brief, not just the stated one. This phase usually takes one to two weeks and produces a shared point of view on what we're building and why.
Phase 02
Design & Development
With direction established, we move into execution. Design and development happen in close proximity — not sequentially — so decisions made in design get stress-tested against what's buildable, and implementation choices inform what we design next. We work in short cycles, share progress continuously, and build toward something real rather than a polished presentation layer.
Phase 03
Deliver & Collaborate
Delivery isn't a handoff. We stay involved through launch and beyond — answering questions, refining details, and supporting what comes next. On retainer engagements, this phase is continuous: each cycle of work flows into the next without the overhead of restarting a relationship.
Why us
How we're different from the alternatives.
There are good design services at every price point. What most of them don't offer is strategic depth, cross-discipline execution, and genuine fluency in the early-stage founder's constraints.
Strategy comes before execution.
Most subscription design services are queues — you submit a request, they return a file. We operate differently. Every engagement starts with context and ends with decisions that can be explained. We don't just produce output; we help you figure out what's worth building and how it should work before we start making it.
We work across design and development.
Brand, product, and code in the same studio means the gap between visual intent and built reality is narrow. You don't lose fidelity in translation, and you don't need to manage two separate relationships. The people designing your product understand what it costs to build, and the people building it care about how it looks.
Built for the zero-to-one moment.
Pre-seed to Series A is a distinct problem space. You don't need agency process or enterprise tooling — you need fast, focused, opinionated creative work that can move as quickly as your thinking does. That's the constraint we've optimised for. Small team, short cycles, direct communication, high output.
Engagement models
Four ways to work together.
Most clients start with a sprint to establish direction, then move to a retainer. We're flexible about how a relationship begins — what matters is that the model fits your current reality, not the one you're planning toward.
Subscription / Retainer
An ongoing creative and development partnership. You get a consistent team that understands your product deeply, without the cost and overhead of hiring in-house. Best for founders and teams who need steady design and development output across multiple workstreams — brand, product, website, assets — month after month. Work compounds over time; the team gets faster and more effective the longer the relationship runs.
Sprint / Project
A focused engagement with a clear goal, defined deliverables, and a set timeline. Best for teams that have a specific thing to build — a website, a product MVP, a rebrand — and want it done well and without open-ended scope. Projects typically run four to ten weeks depending on complexity.
Fractional Team
We embed into your team as a creative and product partner — attending planning sessions, contributing to strategy, and executing alongside your existing people. This model suits funded startups that aren't ready to hire full-time but need the continuity and accountability of someone internal.
Hourly / Custom
For teams with evolving or unpredictable needs. We scope work collaboratively, work in tracked hours, and can flex up or down as priorities shift. Good for established companies that already have strong internal design or engineering capacity and need specialist support on specific problems.
Ready to start?
The best way to figure out if we're the right fit is a short conversation. Tell us where you are, what you're trying to build, and what's blocking you. We'll give you a straight answer on whether and how we can help.
Send us a message