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cinder

Independent design & technology studio

We makecomplex techfeel inevitable.

Cinder is a Berlin studio for brand, product and web. We partner with founders and product teams at SaaS, AI and fintech companies to turn hard problems into work that feels obvious.

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See selected work
Now booking Q1 2027
  • Brand strategy
  • Product design
  • Design systems
  • Web development
  • Motion
  • Creative technology
  • AI interfaces
  • Data visualization

(01)Selected work

Proof, notpromises.

Recent partnerships with teams building in AI, fintech, energy and health. Every project here shipped, and we measured what happened next.

2023 to 2025 · 05 case studies

(06) Next case studyYours could be next.Tell us what you are building and we will show you how we would approach it.

(02)Services

Five disciplines.One senior team.

We work across the whole life of a product brand, so strategy, design and code never lose the thread between them. Hire us for one discipline or all five.

  1. Positioning, naming, visual identity and voice for companies entering a new market or outgrowing their first brand.

    • Positioning
    • Naming
    • Identity systems
    • Brand guidelines

  2. End-to-end design for web and mobile products, from the first prototype to the shipped feature, with research built in at every step.

    • UX research
    • Prototyping
    • Interface design
    • Usability testing

  3. Tokens, component libraries and documentation that keep design and engineering in lockstep as your team scales.

    • Design tokens
    • Component libraries
    • Documentation
    • Governance

  4. Fast, accessible marketing sites engineered in-house, with a content setup your team will actually enjoy using.

    • Art direction
    • Front-end engineering
    • Headless CMS
    • Performance & SEO

  5. Product animation, launch films and interactive experiences that make complex technology easy to feel.

    • Motion systems
    • Launch films
    • 3D & WebGL
    • Interactive prototypes

(03)Studio

An independent studio of strategists, designers and engineers, based in Berlin since 2014.

Good design is what's left when everything unnecessary has burned away.

Cinder is a team of twenty-four strategists, designers and engineers. For more than a decade we have partnered with founders and product teams at SaaS, AI and fintech companies, from their first raise to well past their IPO.

We keep teams small and senior, work in the open and build what we design. No hand-offs and no hand-waving, just work that ships and keeps getting better after launch.

12

Years in practice

140+

Products launched

24

Designers and engineers

$2.1B

Raised by clients after launch

01

Small, senior teams

Every project is led by the people you meet in the first call. No bait and switch, no junior hand-offs.

02

Designers who build

We prototype in the browser early, so ideas are tested in the medium they will actually live in.

03

Measured by outcomes

We agree on the numbers that matter before we start, and we report against them after launch.

(04)Process

From first callto launch day.

  1. 01

    Discover

    2–3 weeks

    We interview your team and your customers, audit the product and the market, and find the one sentence everything else hangs on.

    • Research synthesis
    • Positioning brief
  2. 02

    Define

    1–2 weeks

    Strategy becomes structure: information architecture, success metrics and a roadmap every stakeholder signs off on.

    • Roadmap
    • Success metrics
    • Architecture
  3. 03

    Design

    4–8 weeks

    Rapid, high-fidelity iterations reviewed in weekly critiques with your team. No big reveals and no surprises.

    • Prototypes
    • Interface design
    • Identity
  4. 04

    Build

    4–10 weeks

    Our engineers work alongside the designers from day one, so what ships is exactly what was designed, down to the easing curve.

    • Production code
    • CMS
    • Quality assurance
  5. 05

    Launch & evolve

    Ongoing

    We launch, measure and keep iterating against the numbers we agreed on. Most clients stay with us long after the first release.

    • Analytics
    • Iterations
    • Support

(05)Kind words

What founders and product leaders say once the work is out in the world.

Cinder didn't just redesign our product. They found the story we'd been failing to tell for three years, and signups tripled in a quarter.

Maya OkaforCo-founder and CEO, Kiln
01 / 05
Read the Kiln case study

(06)Start a project

Got somethingworth building?

Start a project

Tell us where you're headed. We reply to every inquiry within two business days, usually with a few smart questions.

hello@cinder.studio
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