Xu Studio began in 2023 with two designers, David and Laura, and one shared habit: before changing a single pixel, we want to know what a piece of work is for. Who will see it, where, for how long, and what should they remember once it is gone?
01How it began
The studio did not start with a grand plan. It started with files: a presentation that had grown to sixty slides, a logo that only worked at one size, a spreadsheet nobody wanted to open. They arrived with the same request, “can you make this look better?”, and again and again we found that the real problem sat underneath the surface.
A slide looked crowded because the argument had no order. A logo looked weak because it was trying to say five things at once. So we began every project the same way: reading, asking and sorting, and only then designing. That habit is still at the centre of how we work. A clear picture rests on a clear sequence.
02Lessons from the classroom
Some of our most demanding clients turned out to be teachers. An exemplary-course submission is judged as a complete lesson, so the courseware has to follow the lesson plan beat by beat: the opening question, the new idea, the practice, the summary. A beautiful slide in the wrong place is worse than no slide at all.
We learned to read lesson plans the way an editor reads a manuscript. We redraw diagrams so a line still reads from the back row and on a recording, and we use animation only where a teacher needs to reveal something step by step: a construction, a derivation, a comparison. Since then, more than a hundred teachers we have worked with have been recognised for their courses, seven of them at national level. The lessons were theirs; we are proud to have helped them shine.
A beautiful slide in the wrong place is worse than no slide at all.
03A few minutes on stage
Student entrepreneurship competitions taught us a different discipline: time. A team may spend months on a business plan of forty pages or more, and then have a few minutes to present it to judges who have already seen dozens of pitches that day.
So our work starts with the plan, not the slides. What problem does the project solve, why is this team the one to solve it, and what have they already achieved? Once that story is clear, the deck follows: one point per page, numbers drawn as charts, and a set of back-up slides for the questions judges are most likely to ask. More than a hundred students we have worked with have gone on to win awards in the Challenge Cup and the China International College Students’ Innovation Competition. The ideas and the hard work were always theirs. Our job was to make sure nothing got in the way.
04Beyond the slides
The same habit travels well. A logo has to hold up on a shop sign and as a tiny icon on a phone. A mini-program has to make sense to someone booking an appointment with one hand while holding a coffee in the other. A spreadsheet has to answer one question before it becomes a chart. A floor plan has to read in seconds when it is pinned to a board.
The formats change, but the questions don’t. That is why we have never wanted to specialise in just one discipline. Moving between them keeps us curious, and it means a client who first comes to us for a presentation can stay with us when they need a brand, an app or a set of drawings.
05Why we stay small
We are sometimes asked whether we plan to grow into a bigger agency. For now, the answer is no. Keeping the studio to the two of us means the person you explain your idea to is the person who designs it. Nothing gets lost between a brief, an account manager and a designer you never meet.
It also keeps the conversation simple. Everything happens in one conversation, on WeChat or by email: the first message, the drafts, the late “one more small change”, and the final files. Small does not mean limited. It means close.
The person you explain your idea to is the person who designs it.
06What comes next
We are still learning, from every teacher who walks us through a lesson and every student team that rehearses its pitch one more time. What we want to keep doing is exactly this: taking ideas that matter to people and giving them a shape that does them justice.
If you have one of those ideas, we would love to hear it. A rough sketch is plenty to begin with.