A-1 Pictures’ Kōenji branch, a new name in April 2018 and a company of its own by October.

CloverWorks started life as a branch, not a start-up. Japanese Wikipedia says A-1 Pictures, the animation studio that Aniplex set up in 2005, began running a second production base, its Kōenji Studio, in 2012, alongside its main Asagaya Studio in Tokyo’s Suginami ward. The Kōenji team made many of A-1’s widely known titles, among them Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day, The Idolmaster, Your Lie in April, Saekano, Vividred Operation and the film The Anthem of the Heart.

The new name arrived first as a label. In a notice dated 2 April 2018, A-1 Pictures said it had renamed the Kōenji Studio “CloverWorks” on 1 April as a new brand. The aim, it said, was to make the production character of its two studios distinct, so that Kōenji and Asagaya would each become a workplace with its own identity in an increasingly varied anime scene. The trade site Anime! Anime! Biz reported the change the next day. English Wikipedia notes that four productions — Slow Start, Darling in the Franxx, Persona 5 the Animation and the second season of Ace Attorney — switched their studio credit from A-1 Pictures to CloverWorks, Darling in the Franxx while it was still in production. Japanese Wikipedia adds that the Idolmaster and Saekano work, and the originals credited to the Super Peace Busters writing team, moved over with the staff who made them.

Six months later the label became a company. Anime News Network reported on 1 October 2018 that CloverWorks had separated from A-1 Pictures that day and become its own company under Aniplex, wholly owned by Aniplex, and the producer Akira Shimizu as president. “Each studio would like to make a contribution by creating good production with original production system and characteristics for a developing animation market in the future,” the studio said. Aniplex is the anime arm of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan), so CloverWorks sits inside the Sony group.

A four-leaf mark, a run of hits and a partnership with Wit Studio.

The studio’s mark explains its name. On its own website, in a report dated 29 June 2018, CloverWorks recounted a producers’ talk event in Asagaya at which Shimizu, then an A-1 Pictures executive officer, explained the new brand: A-1 had grown into a large organisation, and a separate label let a team stay nimble. The four-leaf clover logo, he said, stands for Aniplex, A-1 Pictures and CloverWorks as three leaves, with the fourth leaf the viewers. English Wikipedia describes the logo, in use since 2018, as featuring a four-leaf clover; the company publishes no typeface or colour values for it.

The credits came quickly. Its first season as a company included Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai and the third series of Fairy Tail, followed by The Promised Neverland in 2019 and Fate/Grand Order – Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia. English Wikipedia’s list then runs through Horimiya and Wonder Egg Priority in 2021 and, in 2022, My Dress-Up Darling, Akebi’s Sailor Uniform and Bocchi the Rock!. Spy × Family, which began on TV Tokyo in April 2022, is a co-production with Wit Studio.

The partnership with Wit went further. A joint press release from Aniplex and CloverWorks dated 30 May 2022 announced JOEN, a planning and production company owned by CloverWorks, Wit Studio, Aniplex and the publisher Shueisha. The two studios would lead projects from the first plan onward and build the business scheme themselves, the release said, so that profits could be returned in line with the contribution of studios and creators. CloverWorks producer Yuichi Fukushima and Wit’s Tetsuya Nakatake became its co-representatives.

One parent, two sister studios and one clover.

In television anime the studio is rarely the only name a viewer reads. A series is often financed by a production committee, a group of companies such as publishers, broadcasters, music labels and toy makers, and the committee frequently takes a collective name built from the title of the show. That name appears in the copyright line, on packaging and at the foot of every key visual, while the studio that animated the work is listed in the credits as one partner among several. For a studio, the practical result is that its own mark has to sit politely in small type: a short name, a set of initials or a compact logotype that stays readable on a crowded end card and on a thumbnail-sized poster.

Viewers often fill in the rest. Studio names are widely used as shorthand when people discuss a series, recommend a new one or follow staff from show to show, so a few letters can carry associations that the studio never wrote down in a guideline. Some studios also make their location part of the story, keeping offices away from the capital, setting series in nearby towns or taking part in local events, so that the place itself becomes part of how the name is understood. Where a studio belongs to a larger group, a parent company’s mark may appear beside its own on websites, recruitment pages and corporate reports, and the two have to be arranged so that neither crowds out the other. For designers, the useful lesson is that a studio identity works through the credit line, the conversation around a show and the place it comes from, as much as through any logo.

A move to Nakano, shared leadership and new tools.

The company has since grown out of Kōenji. Japanese Wikipedia says that in spring 2024 CloverWorks moved its head office from the Shin-Kōenji area of Suginami to a tower at Nakano-Sakaue in Nakano ward and brought all its sections together there, with rooms for direction and key animation, colour finishing, background art and photography (compositing) under one roof. Most 3DCG is handled by Boundary, an Aniplex-owned CG studio that Shimizu also heads. In November 2022 Shimizu also became president of A-1 Pictures, so one executive now leads both sister studios.

The newest chapter is about tools. ITmedia News reported on 6 September 2024 that Sony was developing AnimeCanvas, drawing and finishing software built specifically for anime, and introducing it first at the two Aniplex studios, A-1 Pictures and CloverWorks, which had long drawn animation in pencil on paper and were moving that stage to digital. Engineers, the article said, visit both studios often and adjust the software from staff feedback. In April 2026 the two studios jointly opened a new drawing studio named FLINT BASE, according to their own announcements.

For a design guide, CloverWorks shows how an identity can be carved out of an existing one: a branch studio given a name before it was given a company, a logo that draws its family tree as leaves and keeps one for the audience, and a credit line that changed while a series was still being made. Compare the A-1 Pictures and Wit Studio guides. For this guide we use clover green, deep leaf, layout paper and pencil graphite with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep CloverWorks’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.