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Small by design.
Serious by habit.

Cobalt Kin is a two-partner studio with a bench of specialists we've worked with for years. We take on fewer projects than we could, because attention is the actual deliverable.

Our story

We got tired of
watching good
work get diluted.

Both of us spent a decade inside agencies where the pitch team and the delivery team were different people. The strategy changed in the handoff. The design got flattened in the build. The deadline moved, and the thing that got cut was always the part that would have made it work.

So in 2015 Maya Okafor and Theo Lindqvist started a studio with one rule: whoever sells the work builds the work. Eleven years later we've shipped 148 projects under that rule, and the client list is mostly people who came back.

We work across brand, web and product because those problems are never cleanly separated in practice. A new website usually reveals a positioning problem. A product launch usually needs a brand system underneath it. Keeping all of it in one room is the only way we've found to avoid solving the wrong half.

Founded 2015 Oakland, CA 8 people, no layers
The Cobalt Kin team working together in a shared studio space
The bench at work — Thursday critique
Printed brand stationery and collateral from a recent identity project
Identity collateral — Sable & Co

How we operate

Four rules we
don't negotiate.

These are working constraints, not values on a wall. They decide what we say yes to.

Diagnose before designing

No pixel is placed until we can state the commercial problem in one sentence and agree it's the right one.

One decision-maker

Projects stall when approval is diffuse. We ask for a single approver and give them everything they need to decide fast.

Numbers or it didn't happen

We instrument every launch and report on it 90 days later. If a result can't be measured, we don't claim it.

Leave the client stronger

Documented systems, recorded walkthroughs and clean code. The goal is that you don't need us for the next one.

The bench

Who you'll
actually work with.

No juniors learning on your budget. Every name here has owned a launch end to end.

MO

Maya Okafor

Partner · Strategy & Brand
TL

Theo Lindqvist

Partner · Design & Build
RN

Reeta Nair

Lead · Product & Research
DM

Devon Marsh

Lead · Front-end Engineering

Eleven years,
a few milestones.

We grew slowly on purpose. Each of these years changed how we work, not just what we make.

  • 2015

    Studio founded in a shared Oakland loftTwo people, one client, one very long checklist.

  • 2017

    First brand system at scaleA regional retailer with 60 locations and no consistent signage.

  • 2019

    Product practice addedReeta joined to lead research; we stopped treating interfaces as brochures.

  • 2022

    Went senior-onlyStopped hiring juniors, started a specialist bench we trust by name.

  • 2024

    Accessibility became a defaultWCAG 2.2 AA on every build, written into scope, not sold as an extra.

  • 2026

    148 projects shippedMedian conversion lift of 2.4× across the last 24 months.