Five people. Four projects a year. No handoffs.
Hilaga means "north." We keep the studio small so the people who pitch your project are the same people who design it, build it, and answer the phone when something breaks.
We build what we design
Every screen we draw, we also code. If a design can't survive real data, slow networks, and a five-year-old Android phone, it doesn't leave the studio.
Designed in the open
You get a link to the working file and the staging site on day one. There is no big reveal — you watch the work happen and steer it weekly.
Plain words, real numbers
We write copy the way people in your customers' cities actually speak, and we measure the work against the metric we agreed on at kickoff.
ProcessEvery project runs the same four moves, in order
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Scope, in writing
One or two weeks. We interview your team and a handful of real users, then hand you a short written brief: the problem, the metric that defines success, and a fixed price. You can take that document to any studio — most clients stay.
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Design against real data
We design with your actual records, names, and edge cases from the first screen. Weekly working sessions, not presentations — you comment in the file, and decisions get logged so nobody relitigates them in week six.
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Build by the same hands
The designers who drew the screens write the front-end. Staging is public to your team the whole time, tested on the devices and connections your customers really use — including a ₱4,000 Android phone we keep on every desk.
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Hand over, then stay reachable
You get the code, the design files, and written docs your in-house team can extend. Thirty days of included fixes after launch, and a direct line to the people who built it — not a ticket queue.
ServicesWhat you can hire us for
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Product design sprint
Two to six weeks on one flow that's underperforming — onboarding, checkout, a dashboard your operators dread. Ends with tested screens and a build plan.
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Design & build engagement
Our standard project: eight to sixteen weeks, scope to launch, one team throughout. Most of the work on the ledger was this shape.
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Design system & docs
For teams that ship weekly and keep rebuilding the same button. Tokens, components, and usage rules documented where engineers actually look — the codebase.
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Brand for digital-first companies
Wordmark, type, color, and voice, delivered as working web pages rather than a PDF. We take brand work only when we're also building the site.
PeopleWho you'll actually work with
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Marikit Sarmiento
Design lead · Co-founder
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Paolo Buencamino
Engineering lead · Co-founder
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Aya del Rosario
Brand & type
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Jun Ocampo
Producer
Start a project
Tell us what you're building, where it's stuck, and when you need it live. We reply within two working days — with a straight answer, even when that answer is "you don't need a studio for this."