Every market ends up as a crowded street
Same promises, same palettes, the same three words on every homepage in the category. Nobody planned it. Everyone arrived there by copying the last sensible thing they saw.
Strategy first.
BYPA · Independent design studio, London
It is loud out there. The open water is one decision away.
The short version of how we thinkSo everyone shouts louder
More ads, more content, more features, a rebrand every second year. Expensive, exhausting, and it changes nothing, because every competitor is doing the same thing on the same day.
The way out is not volume
It is a decision. What you are actually for, who you are not for, and what you are willing to stop competing on. Narrow enough to be a real choice, and yours enough that nobody can copy it by Friday.
Make that decision and you are not on the street any more. You are in open water, setting the terms instead of matching them.
Digital strategyPositioning and messaging
Brand identityLogo, type, colour, guidelines
WebsitesDesign and front-end build
Services
Three ways we work together.
They stack in order, and each one stands on its own. Most people start with strategy. Everything is a fixed fee for a defined scope, agreed before we begin.
01
Digital strategy
Work out what you are for, who it is for, and where you can win.
For teams whose offer is clear in their own heads but muddy everywhere else. We read the market and your competitors, talk to the people you are trying to reach, and come back with a position you can actually hold, plus the words to say it.
- Market and competitor read
- Audience and positioning
- Messaging framework
- Naming and tone direction
- Channel and content plan
02
Brand identity
Design it so it looks like you, and not like everyone else in your category.
The visual and verbal system that carries the strategy. Built to hold up at favicon size, in dark mode, in a pitch deck and in the hands of people who are not designers, because that is where most identities quietly fall apart.
- Logo and wordmark
- Type and colour system
- Art direction and imagery
- Brand guidelines
- Deck, social and document templates
03
Website design and build
A site that does the explaining for you, and loads fast doing it.
Design and front-end build, from a single landing page to a full marketing site. We structure the pages around the decision your visitor is trying to make, write the copy direction, then build it properly: accessible, quick, and easy for you to update after we hand it over.
- Sitemap, structure and copy direction
- UI design, desktop and mobile
- Front-end build and animation
- Technical SEO and analytics setup
- Handover, training and support window
Selected work
Recent projects.
Three that show the range: a regulated fintech, an education business and an experiential studio. Open one to see what was actually decided and built.
Veridex Alethia
A post-execution evidence layer for regulated finance. The product was genuinely new, which meant buyers had no shelf to put it on. The work was naming the category and making a deeply technical thing read clearly to the people who sign off on it.
The problem
Veridex had built a way to keep signed documents reviewable after execution: who signed, who controls it, what state it is in now, carried across parties, jurisdictions and systems. Nobody was searching for that, because the category did not have a name. Meanwhile every reviewing party was rebuilding the same proof independently, so one document could be verified eight separate times.
The risk with a product like this is leading with the architecture. Engineers understand it immediately. The people who approve the budget do not.
What we decided
- Named the category. "Rights Continuity" gives buyers a thing to ask for, rather than a description they have to reassemble each time.
- Led with the problem, not the tech. The site opens on "Execution went digital. Evidence review did not." and lands it with "Signing is the easy part. Proving it later is what breaks."
- Eight doors, not one. Banking, trade finance, fintech, capital markets, web3, real estate, energy and government each get their own entry point, so a buyer meets their own situation before meeting the product.
- Sat beside, not on top. Framed as a composable layer that works with existing infrastructure, because "replace your stack" is a conversation nobody in a regulated bank wants to start.
- Claim discipline throughout. Copy describes what the product does and stops there. In regulated categories, an overclaim is not a marketing problem, it is a legal one.
What we built
- Positioning and messaging framework, including the category name and the problem narrative
- Six products given one shared explanation: Live Right Passport, Rights Control Tower, Proof Pack, Evidence Continuity Index, Disclosure Envelope and ARI
- Identity system: restrained corporate-technical, red and blue marque, midnight and light themes
- Schematic diagrams showing evidence moving between parties, in place of stock imagery
- Full site structure: overview, the problem, why now, products, what it is, who it is for, how it works, and a blog that teaches the category
- Regulatory context handled plainly across UCC, DORA, MiCA and eIDAS
Edexos Treasuries
Bitcoin treasury education for small and medium businesses. The category is loud, and most of what exists is either hype or engineering. Edexos needed to look like something a finance director could be seen reading.
The problem
SME leaders are quietly curious about Bitcoin as a treasury question, and almost every source available to them makes that curiosity harder to act on. One half is price talk and promises. The other half is written for engineers.
The brand had a credibility problem before it had a marketing problem: anything that looked even slightly like promotion would put off exactly the cautious, sensible reader it was built for.
What we decided
- Education, not advice. The position is "Bitcoin education for SMEs", and the line between teaching and recommending is held everywhere in the copy. That boundary is the product.
- Help before asking. The site is built to be useful on the first visit: a knowledge hub, diagnostic tools and a Bitcoin IQ quiz, all free, none gated behind a form.
- Sober on purpose. No price charts, no countdowns, no moon language. The restraint is what signals this is for treasury decisions rather than trading.
- Written for the second reader. Anything an SME leader reads here, they may have to justify to a board. The language is plain enough to forward without editing.
What we built
- Positioning and messaging around treasury awareness, with the education boundary written into the guidelines
- Identity built for trust: sober palette, plain typographic system, no crypto visual cliches
- Site structure organised around the free tools rather than a sales path
- Bitcoin IQ quiz as its own route, so it can be shared and linked on its own
- Fast front-end build, technical SEO and metadata set up for the education queries the audience actually types
Mind in Lemon
A Barcelona studio running experiential workshops with a methodology of its own. The session only truly makes sense once you are in the room, so the job was making that feeling legible online without turning it into corporate wellness.
The problem
Guided conversation, hands working with real materials, and something made by the end of it. Everyone who attends understands it instantly. Everyone who has not attended hears "workshop" and pictures something else entirely.
Two failure modes were sitting either side of this: sounding like therapy, or sounding like a team-building away day. Both would have brought in the wrong room.
What we decided
- Named the method. Pensamiento Tangible, tangible thinking, turns a loose set of sessions into something ownable that can be booked, taught and licensed.
- Three pillars to stand on. Hands, distance, evidence. Enough structure for a company to say yes to, without flattening the feeling of it.
- Poetic but grounded. The site opens on "Tu intuición ya lo sabe" and follows with the reasoning: some things are not solved by thinking harder, they change when you can see them from somewhere else.
- Spanish first. Written natively rather than translated, because the warmth lives in the phrasing.
- Showed the room. Documentary photography of hands, materials and tables, so people can see what they would actually be doing.
What we built
- Naming and framing of the Pensamiento Tangible methodology, plus the three-pillar structure
- Identity and art direction: warm cream base, generous space, natural materials, no stock imagery
- Tone of voice that stays personal at every touchpoint
- Site covering the four formats, public sessions, private groups, corporate sessions and retreats, each explaining what happens in the room
- Supporting sections for testimonials, FAQ and newsletter, so the studio can keep filling sessions without ads
Reviews
What clients say.
Short, specific and from people who have been through the whole process. Drag the top card, or press next.
More references available on request, including clients happy to take a call.
We came in wanting a new logo and left with the thing we had actually been missing, which was a clear answer to what we do. The site was the easy part after that.
The strategy sessions were the most useful two weeks we have spent as a founding team. Everyone now describes the business the same way, which was not true before.
Deadlines held, questions got answered the same day, and the handover meant our team could keep editing the site ourselves. Rare on both counts.
Six months on we still describe ourselves with the same three sentences. Nobody drifts back to the old version, because everyone was in the room when we decided it.
We had been arguing about the logo for the best part of a year. It turned out the logo was never the argument.
Free, no need to hire us
The blend-in test.
Five questions you can run on your own brand right now. Tick the ones that are hard to answer.
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01
The swap test
Put a competitor's name on your homepage headline. Does it still sound true? If it does, it is describing your industry, not you.
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02
The who is it for test
Can you say who you are not for? If you are trying to be for everyone, it is hard for anyone to feel it is really for them.
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03
The five second test
Show your site to a friend for five seconds, then hide it. Can they say what you do and who it is for? If not, the words need work before the design does.
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04
The is this really you test
Think of the safe choices you made to look professional. The plain blue, the stock photo. Some help. Some just make you look like everyone else.
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05
The one sentence test
Finish this out loud: we are the only ___ that ___. If that is hard, it is the bit worth getting clear on first.
The studio
You work with the person doing the work, start to finish.
BYPA is an independent design studio in Notting Hill, founded by Paula Simelionyte, a digital design strategist. Projects run with a small trusted group of collaborators when a job needs more hands, but the thinking and the design stay with the same person throughout.
We work mostly with founders and small teams in markets that are hard to explain: fintech, education, web3, hospitality. The common thread is a good product that people keep having to describe twice.
- BasedNotting Hill, London
- Working acrossUK, Europe, remote
Supporting the Bitcoin ecosystem. We work with builders and educators in the space, and we are happy to use it.
Questions
The things people ask before booking.
How does a project start?
With a 30 minute call. You tell us what you are building and where it feels stuck, and we tell you what we would do about it. If it is a fit, you get a short proposal with scope, timing and cost. If it is not, we will point you at someone better suited.
How much does it cost?
Every project is a fixed fee for a defined scope, so there are no hourly surprises. What it costs depends on how much is being decided from scratch. You see the number in the proposal before anything starts, and it does not move unless the scope does.
How long does it take?
It depends on how much is being decided from scratch, how many people need to sign off, and how ready your content is. Some projects move quickly, others need more room to think. You get a schedule with dates in the proposal, before anything starts.
Can we book just one service?
Yes. They stack in order but each stands alone. Most people start with strategy, though if your positioning is already settled we can go straight to identity or the site.
Do you work with clients outside London?
Yes. The studio is in Notting Hill and work runs remotely across the UK, Europe and further out. Recent projects have run between London and Barcelona.
Do you write the copy as well?
The messaging and the page copy direction come as part of strategy and website work. For long form content such as an ongoing blog, we bring in a writer we trust rather than pretending it is our specialism.
What if we already have a designer?
That happens often. We can do the strategy and hand your team a clear brief to design against, which is usually cheaper than starting over.
Get in touch
Not sure where your brand is getting lost? Let's work it out.
Book 30 minutes. You tell us what you are building, we tell you honestly where we think it is getting muddy and what we would do about it. No pitch, no pressure, and no obligation to hire anyone.