Work is Play Studio

We partnered with the brand team at Hex to rethink what a corporate blog could be. The goal? Make content more discoverable and the experience genuinely enjoyable—taking inspiration from tech publications already pushing the envelope (Figma’s Shortcut, Retool’s Cache, Stripe.dev). This is one of the art directions we loved putting together, drawing from ’90s displays, bitmaps, and sharp grids. ?? Offcuts from Work is Play Studio

We're looking for a Senior Digital Brand Designer! Are you the one?! See below????

?S — because we’ve searched for this Mickey Mouse-style hover cursor way too many times. Huge shoutout to Jamie Brittain for solving the problem with cursor.design. No more digging through old files ?????? Find that resource below ???? https://cursor.design/ #playmode #workisplay #?S

?S — Inspired by our friends at Design Business Company Inc, who created and published this ASCII generator on GitHub, we used ChatGPT to transform Jordan Egstad's ASCII code into a clean HTML file that runs right in your browser—no setup needed. Just upload an image, and it’ll convert it using Jordan’s code into ASCII text you can copy/paste or save as a PNG. You can also invert the image. Pretty fun to mess around with! Shoutout to our rad Art Director, Jon Schafer, for whipping this up! Download links below in the comments ????

Behind the Screens? — A recent project had us diving deep into color, light, and the way perception shapes experience... though portals. Naturally, that led us back to our first love — SCIENCE! Professor Farnsworth voice. Here’s a sneak peek at what we’re building as we move into development—playing with gradients, space, and that feeling of stepping into something… otherworldly. This one’s going to be special. ??? #workmode #workisplay #wip-bts

Severance has us hooked. Its retro-futuristic minimalism is a masterclass—boxy computers, eerie corporate posters, sterile UI that strips tasks to unsettling simplicity. Every detail, from outdated interfaces to overly formal language, crafts a world that’s both familiar and deeply alien. What seems stark at first is anything but. The more you look, the more layers emerge—precise framing, hidden symbolism, and a slow-burn mystery that keeps unraveling. DHHHNNGGG... *ding* At Lumon Industries, our work is important and mysterious. Here at MDR, our job is to sort groups of numbers based on how they make us feel. Now you too can join us in Macro-Data Refinement — and help us find the scary numbers. Check out the link below you outies. https://lnkd.in/g_kU6cre #playmode #workisplay #PraiseKeir

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When your client’s Slack messages are basically mic drops — with all the ?? emojis. Big thanks to our friends at Novo for trusting us, challenging us, and pushing fragile ideas further. And, of course, for letting us play. There were memes, GIFs, Moodeng emojis, and even asking ChatGPT to deep dive into our lives. Always a good time over Slack! Thank you, Steph (Krivitzky) Lusby, Rares Crisan, Marisa Hutton, Marcello Rossi, Yohana Tanjung-Alfaro and many more. Swipe for the receipts →

New look, same mission! We gave our website a refresh—and we partnered with two incredible small businesses, Work is Play Studio and Dawn, to bring it to life. Because supporting small businesses isn’t just what we do, it’s also how we work. Novo exists to help more people be successfully self-employed. Now, our website makes it even easier to see how we do it. Take a look at the new site in action ??

Your website’s the front door. Make it count. Before someone signs up, downloads, or buys, they’re checking your website — and in a few seconds, they’ve already made a decision. Does this feel legit? Can I trust it? For Novo, the product was solid, but the website wasn’t keeping up. At Work is Play Studio we partnered with Dawn to help change that. ? Ditched the tech jargon — we talked to business owners like real humans. ? Elevated Novo’s digital presence with beautifully crafted designs across the website and paid social — ensuring every touchpoint spoke directly to business owners. ? Built a flexible and scaleable web design system that works everywhere, every time. ? Making Novo feel unmistakably like Novo — authentic, confident, trustworthy — not just another fintech blending into the crowd. The result? A site that works hard, builds trust, and turns visitors into customers. First impressions matter. Make them stick.