Flying Towards the North Star — Consulting — 2024
The challenge
During my second semester of the Master’s in Strategic Design and Entrepreneurship, I participated in a semester-long consultancy project developed in collaboration with a Copenhagen-based strategic design studio. The project was carried out by a multidisciplinary team consisting of a graphic designer (myself), product designer Lin, business developer Bart, and experimental designer Hugo.
The studio is recognized for its strong visual capabilities and its work at the intersection of design, storytelling, and future-oriented innovation. Their initial brief focused on exploring new developments for the company — including emerging technologies such as AI, new tools, and potential market opportunities. While ambitious, the brief was broad and largely solution-oriented, leaving questions around strategic focus and long-term direction.
The solution
As consultants, our task became less about proposing new offerings and more about understanding what already defined the studio at its core. Over a four-month period, we embedded ourselves in the organization and worked closely with the team through ethnographic observation, interviews, workshops, and thematic analysis. This process revealed that the underlying challenge was not a lack of ideas or capabilities, but a need for internal alignment and a clearly articulated organizational identity to guide future decisions.
Our proposal, the North Star concept, emerged as a strategic design intervention aimed at building shared direction from within. At the center of this concept is a culture handbook designed in Figma; not as a traditional brand manual, but as a dynamic internal tool. The handbook surfaces the studio’s purpose, values, and aspirations, encouraging reflection, dialogue, and collective ownership across the team.
To further anchor this direction, we proposed a sculptural object for the studio space: a tangible, symbolic manifestation of their shared vision. Serving as a daily reminder of who they are and where they are heading, the object complements the handbook by translating strategy into physical presence.
Together, these interventions supported identity-led decision-making, strengthened internal cohesion, and established a foundation for future growth and exploration.