Studiotheory is a practice.

It occurs every day, everywhere, all the time.

Sometimes, it's as simple as noticing how paint cracking on an old wooden boat resembles a kind of time fingerprint. Other times, it is understanding the psychology of type and color combinations and their ability to evoke a response.

A practice is an activity that requires constant exercising or, well, practicing. It involves all the elements and principles of design, psychology, spatial awareness, curiosity, a dose of intuition, and most importantly, activity. It's a process of perceiving the physical and how others respond to the structures we create. A healthy practice is diverse, experimental and innovative. It allows time and a safe space for experimentation outside the parameters of a specific project, revealing new possibilities, fostering growth, and developing expertise. We believe it's important for us to create in this space to become better at what we do. Making mistakes and breaking stuff in a low-stakes environment is how we learn and grow.

Derek Coté

Founder & Creative Lead

My creative path has afforded me several opportunities to work in a variety of settings. As an artist and freelance designer, I've worked with documentary film makers, animation studios, and magazine editors. I've spent time as an in-house designer, worked in agency settings, and even spent some time in academia. In between, there was graduate school, a few off-shoot projects and some travel, including numerous trips above the Arctic Circle resulting in volumes of visual research, a few short films, pages of drawings and a pile of objects.

Maintaining a studio practice has always been essential to my development as a thinker and a well-rounded creative. And it's not just about mining the things that I've learned over the years. It's also tapping into the things my friends and colleagues have learned and applying them to other peoples' design projects. The result of all of this is a highly tuned understanding of visual language. The real winners are my happy clients. They benefit from all of this knowledge in the form of powerful design that elevates their brand and stands the test of time. That's what studiotheory is about.