Identity · Wayfinding
Saltmarsh Ferry Co.
A four-boat ferry line needed one voice across timetables, hulls, and dock signage. We gave them a mark you can read from the water.
Design studio · Two people · Est. 2019
Good design is mostly
the courage to leave things out.
We're a two-person studio working with small organizations that have something worth saying — identities, print, and websites built slowly, argued over, and kept simple on purpose.
Selected work
Four projects from the last two years. We take on six or seven a year, which is as many as two people can do honestly.
Identity · Print
Gullwing Books
An independent bookshop with three staff and strong opinions. Identity, shelf talkers, and a monthly broadsheet the owners still typeset themselves.
Exhibition · Website
Pinehold Maritime Museum
A permanent exhibition on small-boat building, plus a website that treats the collection catalogue as the main event, not an afterthought.
Packaging · Identity
North Pier Roasters
Coffee packaging that survives a wet dock and a dim shelf. Two colors, one typeface, and a label system the roaster can extend without calling us.
What we do
Three things, done thoroughly. If your project needs something else — photography, copywriting, a larger team — we'll say so and point you to people we trust.
01
Identity
Naming, marks, type, and color — plus the plain-language guidelines that let a small team use them without us. An identity you need an agency to maintain isn't finished.
02
Books, broadsheets, signage, packaging. We still do press checks in person, and we'll argue for the cheaper paper when the cheaper paper is right.
03
Websites
Small, fast sites that the client can edit. We design in the browser, hand over clean HTML and CSS, and stay reachable after launch.
The studio
Harbor & Pine is Iris Malone and Teo Reston, working out of a former sail loft above a chandlery. We met at a print shop, disagreed productively for four years, and decided that was a business model.
We keep the studio small on purpose. Two people means the person who sketched your mark is the person who checks it on press, and nobody has to ask what the client actually said.
Iris Malone
Identity and type. Formerly of a book publisher's design department; still letterpresses on weekends.
Teo Reston
Print production and web. Ran a two-color press for six years; writes CSS the way he set ink — sparingly.
They turned down half of what we asked for, and they were right about all of it. The identity has outlasted two shop refits and a new boat.
— Owner, Saltmarsh Ferry Co.
How a project runs
No discovery theater, no forty-page decks. Three stages, each one ending with something real in your hands.
- Listen. A long first conversation, then a short written brief in plain language. You correct it until it's true — nothing is designed before that.
- Make. One direction, developed properly, rather than three thin ones. You see honest work-in-progress at set points, not a reveal at the end.
- Hand over. Files, guidelines, and a working session with whoever maintains it. The goal is that you stop needing us — and call anyway, for the next thing.
Tell us what you're making
We book two or three projects a season and reply to every inquiry within a week — including the ones we can't take, with a recommendation for who could.