Almond is a studio of two based in Auckland, doing insanely big things. Alex, our technical director, and Monica, our creative director, have both worked internationally from London to Berlin on clients like Apple, Universal, Moby, Jo Malone and the BBC.
Now they’ve joined forces to make special things for awesome clients. They’re good at what they do and are also radically honest. That means they’re open, ready to be vulnerable and don’t hold with bullshit. And they’re nice. Really nice, which is good, being hard to work with serves no one.
Their goal? To exceed expectations – yours and theirs. Those are some high standards to live up to, which is why Harvey, their pug, and highly valued team member, keeps them humble with a weekly grumble – that’s many, many pugs zooming around in circles and making their humans laugh.
Alex has been building digital things for thirteen years. He’s techy enough to have built digital products for clients like Apple, Universal and Fairfax media, but he can talk to humans, too. The really clever part? Alex knows how technology should work with design to solve business problems.
He gets his hands dirty, working on the tools to leap frog problems, find genius workarounds and make good things happen. Oh, and Alex? He’ll tell you when you’re wrong. Very, very kindly. Because, ultimately, he wants to create something useful for your business – something that’ll change the way people think, or buy, or behave. Any number of incredible things can happen when technology really works.
To Monica, good design is about sparking beautiful experiences that connect businesses to audiences. She sweats the small stuff. She crafts. But underneath the beautiful layouts, is a strategic powerhouse – Monica is a behavioural psychologist, researcher and business analyst rolled into one. It’s not surprising, really, that her international experience has seen her working with brands like BBC, Jo Malone, Harrods.
Day-to-day, she’s the one setting project goals and cracking whips, and even takes care of some of the website development.
But the best bit? When it comes down to it, Monica’s in it for her clients – they know she has their backs and trust that her work will help them keep ahead in the rapidly changing digital world.