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Corvel

Brand, product and web for people who make things

Corvel is an independent studio of 14 designers and developers in Rotterdam and Lisbon. We work with roasters, rail operators, clinics, record labels and museums, often for several years.

See the workStart a project

Selected work

Recent projects

Six of the projects we finished in the last three years, from a coffee bag to a 31-station rail line.

All work

How we work

A small senior team, from the first workshop to launch

Every project runs with three to five people, led by one of the partners, who stays on it from the brief to the last file.

  • The people you meet do the work

    The designers and developers in the first workshop are the ones who draw, build and test your project. Nothing is passed to another team once the contract is signed.

  • One plan for the name, the signs and the site

    We plan identity, wayfinding and web together from the start, so a decision made for the logo still holds on a station sign or a checkout page.

  • We stay after launch

    We check how the work holds up in daily use, fix what people stumble over and show your team how to extend it. Most clients keep working with us for years.

Clients from the last few years

Services

What we do

Most projects combine two or three of these. We plan them together so the identity, the signs and the website come from the same decisions.

All services

  1. Brand identity

    Names, logos, type, colour and the rules that hold them together, tested on real applications from the first round of concepts.

    • Naming
    • Logo and wordmark
    • Type and colour
    • Brand guidelines
    • Templates

  2. Packaging and print

    Packaging, reports and printed matter designed around how things are actually produced, filled and shipped.

    • Packaging systems
    • Labels
    • Annual reports
    • Editorial design
    • Print production

  3. Wayfinding and signage

    Sign families for stations, shops, hospitals and museums, sized and placed for people reading at walking speed.

    • Site surveys
    • Sign families
    • Fabrication drawings
    • Pilot mock-ups
    • Shop fascias

  4. Websites and products

    Websites, shops and apps, designed and built by the same team, with accessibility tested during design rather than after.

    • Research
    • Product design
    • Design systems
    • Front-end development
    • Content design
    • Accessibility audits
people across two studios
14
years working independently, since 2015
11
of last year’s work came from returning clients
70%

  • “We expected a nicer font and new colours. What we got was a team standing on our platforms at six in the morning with a stopwatch and a clipboard.”

    Hanneke VosHead of customer experience, Northline Rail

  • “The test sessions with our older patients were humbling. Corvel kept bringing them back into every design review, and the design system they left behind is small enough that our team actually uses it.”

    Dr Priya RamanDirector of digital services, Fenwick Health

  • “Every label wants its logo on the front. We didn’t, because the covers belong to the artists. Corvel gave us a system that’s always there but never in the way.”

    Rita CoelhoFounder, Marrow Records

Journal

Notes from the studio

How we write briefs, price projects, test signs and choose type. Written by the people who did the work.

All posts

  • Signage at walking speed

    • Wayfinding
    • Research

    A person walking through a station gets about two seconds with each sign. What that does to type sizes, word counts and where signs go, from our work on Northline's 31 stations.

    Sanne Vermeulen

Have a project in mind?

Tell us what you’re making and when it needs to be ready. We reply within two working days, usually with a few questions and a date for a call.

Start a projecthello@corvel.example