Reykjavík, 2014.

Ueno is a digital design and innovation studio founded in Reykjavík, Iceland, in 2014 by the Icelandic designer and entrepreneur Haraldur Thorleifsson, usually known as Halli. TechCrunch reported on 6 January 2021 that he founded the agency in Reykjavík in 2014, and The Reykjavík Grapevine gave the same year in news pieces dated 4 March 2021 and 3 June 2022.

The studio grew out of Thorleifsson’s own freelance work. Iceland Review, in a long profile published on 8 February 2023, said Ueno grew from his freelancing, that a project for Google was an early break, and that as his projects became larger he realised he needed to organise a team. Over time, the magazine said, Ueno became a full-service design agency that developed apps, made websites and created brands. The same profile said his career in technology had let him live and work in cities including Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Vancouver, Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro.

Thorleifsson has been modest about the founding. In its 2022 cover interview, The Reykjavík Grapevine reported that he called the origin story of Ueno “not that inspiring.” He told the paper that starting a company was a way to put himself into a different context: presenting himself as a company meant he could win bigger projects, and he later brought together freelancers who came to work for him full time. In a post on his own website dated 8 September 2025, he wrote that he started Ueno in his apartment in Reykjavík; another page on the same site says he started it in his kitchen.

The name is short, and the company played with it in its own copy. Its about page in 2016, as archived by the Wayback Machine, opened with the line “Such Ueno. Very digital. Much agency.” By 2019 the same page told visitors they had found Ueno, “And no, that’s not how you pronounce it,” and in 2020 it said the team hoped it was pronouncing the name correctly. A recruiting line on the 2019 page added that you cannot spell Ueno without U.

Reykjavík, then three American cities.

Ueno’s offices were spread between Iceland and the United States. TechCrunch said in January 2021 that its staff worked in Reykjavík, San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and the Icelandic technology site Northstack, in a report dated 6 January 2021, listed the same four cities. The company’s own about pages from 2016 to 2020 named an office in each. Its 2020 page said the New York office, in Soho, opened in 2015, and described Reykjavík as the place where the company grew up. The Reykjavík Grapevine reported in March 2021 that the Reykjavík office was at Hafnartorg.

The company also ran projects under its own name. Its 2019 and 2020 about pages pointed to Bueno, a giving programme for charities, and to Uenoland, a conference the studio said it set up because it was the event it had always wanted to attend. The 2019 page also linked to a Ueno store and a Ueno events site.

Ownership changed in January 2021. Northstack reported on 6 January 2021 that Twitter had acquired Ueno, citing an announcement on Twitter by the company’s chief design officer, Dantley Davis, and said the team would join Twitter’s design and research team. TechCrunch described the deal the same day as an acqui-hire, noted that Ueno had already partnered with Twitter on design and product work, and said Twitter had told it that Ueno would wind down its agency and finish existing projects for other clients in the weeks ahead. Neither report gave terms.

The Reykjavík Grapevine reported on 4 March 2021 that Twitter had opened an office in Reykjavík in connection with the deal. It quoted a post by Thorleifsson dated 27 February 2021 saying he had started work that day as a Twitter employee, and that Twitter had set up a company entity in Iceland so he could stay there.

The agency did not stay closed. In the September 2025 post on his site, Thorleifsson wrote that after a break the innovation agency was reopening with a new focus. A press release distributed through EIN Presswire on 8 September 2025 said he was relaunching Ueno as a boutique, project-based agency, and that while he had kept ownership of Ueno after 2021, the company had gone quiet.

A four-letter name with a wink.

Digital and interactive studios rarely have a product on a shelf, so the name and the website carry the identity work. Many of the names are made up rather than descriptive: a word with a numeral attached, a film-industry term borrowed and hyphenated, a phrase that hints at a way of working. The same name can also be written several ways over the years. Trade magazines may print it in lower case while the studio’s own site sets it in capitals, and a hyphen or a numeral can become a distinctive part of the mark.

The studio website is usually the main brand surface. It works as a portfolio, with full-screen video and case studies in front and the typography kept plain. Office cities are often written as short codes along the top of the page, and project credits, director rosters and archives are treated as part of the brand, because they show who made what and when.

These identities also change shape as the business changes. Studios open and close offices, split a film arm from an agency, or fold their work into new ventures under the original name. When reading them, look at how the name is set across the website, the credits and the trade press, how the studio lists its cities, and what it keeps from earlier eras in its archive.

Client work, as dated facts.

Ueno’s client list was a large part of how the press described it. TechCrunch wrote in January 2021 that the agency had worked for companies including Google, Facebook, Reuters, Uber, ESPN, Walmart, Visa, Apple and Slack, as well as start-ups such as Strava, Superhuman and Credit Karma. Northstack named Dropbox, Slack, Red Bull and Twitter among its clients.

Some projects were named directly. Iceland Review said in February 2023 that work associated with the studio included the Google Santa Tracker, the Reuters news app and an online guide for Dropbox. Ueno’s own 2016 about page highlighted work for Lonely Planet, the Reuters TV service and the question-and-answer app Jelly; TechCrunch noted that Jelly had been created by the Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, and that the publishing platform Medium, another Ueno client, came from Twitter co-founder Evan Williams.

The company’s voice ran through its own pages. The 2019 about page said Ueno created brands, built products and devised campaigns, using strategy, design, content and technology. The 2020 page set out values under short headings such as “Be raw,” “Figure it out” and “Bring the chocolate,” and described the San Francisco office as sitting in the middle of the city’s SoMa district. The relaunched site, read in October 2026, describes Ueno as a strategic design and innovation studio and says that in 2021 the team joined Twitter and in 2025 opened again as a boutique agency.

For a design guide, Ueno shows how a studio can make its name part of the joke, using about pages, pronunciation gags and side projects to give four letters a personality. Compare ustwo, another studio whose name plays on its founders, and B-Reel, a digital production company in this collection. For this guide we use harbour navy, night ink and lamp yellow with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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