After months of discussion and work, Antoine and I are proud to introduce our new venture: Mana Studio. A digital design studio focused on building great products in the sports and eSports industries.

How did we get there?

We met during our time subcontracting for TM, a design studio based in San Francisco, where we worked closely together in a fully remote work environment. While working together was great, we immediately clicked on a personal level as our way of living were aligned.
We believe that even if work is an important aspect of our life, it shouldn’t get in the way of living. The remote culture we were evolving in, allowed us to have a healthy life/work balance.
When we both parted way with TM to head back into freelancing solo, we kept discussing, exchanging feedback and helping each other working on personal projects (like designcurated.io).

Why together?

Freelancing is something we both enjoyed, but it can be lonely, hard to iterate and shape ideas without someone else to bounce them off (also to keep your crazy creative mind in check). Knowing we liked working together and had the same vision on how we want to work, we started discussing about teaming up on some personal projects and consulting missions.
Fast forward a few weeks later, the discussion gets to the point where both of us think it is time to take the next step in our career and outgrow our one-man operations to join our effort. This wasn’t a light decision to take, giving up both our successful businesses to build a fully-remote venture. But we believed we had to take the risk and explore this opportunity

The studio

We know what you think, “Great a new design studio that does what everyone does”, but that is not true. Early on we decided to narrow our focus on industries we liked, that we knew about and where we had great experiences in the past to build from. That’s why we decided to focus on the sports and eSports industries.
From a designer’s perspective, those two industries have some of the most interesting environments to develop great products. On one side businesses looking to increase their footprints into the digital world and increase the interaction with their audiences, on the other side some of the most passionate and engaged userbases you can find.
After months of work creating the brand and laying the foundation of the studio (and some procrastination aka “team-building playing Minecraft”), we are proud to unveil Mana Studio and to start getting in business.

Fun fact: Before starting working on this, we’ve only met face-to-face once for a few beers. Location doesn’t matter when the rest aligns.