/ 001
Build the risk first
If one part of the idea might not work, that part gets prototyped in week three — not month five when the budget is spent.
Studio
Eighteen FREAKS
in one workshop
Designers, engineers, fabricators, composers and producers sharing one workshop, one fabrication floor and a very patient sound room.
The house style
Nothing here sits still.
Our identity is a system, not a logo lockup — letterforms that deform under pressure, the same way a room changes when a crowd walks into it.
Who we are
We started in 2024 in a rented unit with one projector, two laptops and a very forgiving landlord.
Two years on we run two workshops, a fabrication floor, an anechoic-ish sound room and an R&D budget that is protected in every contract we sign. We still take one project a year purely because it scares us.
We are deliberately small for the scale of work we take on. Everyone in the studio is senior enough to be trusted alone on site at 3am, and every project has exactly one person whose name is on it.
We hire people who make things outside work — instrument builders, climbers, a former fireworks technician. Curiosity is the only non-negotiable.
0People
0Workshops
0In operation
0Time on R&D
Principles
Five things we hold to
/ 002
One team, one line
Design, code and fabrication never hand off across companies. The gaps between vendors are where experiences go to die.
/ 003
It has to survive Tuesday
Opening night is easy. We engineer for the wet Tuesday in month seven with a bored school group and one technician on call.
/ 004
Sound is not an afterthought
Audio is briefed on day one alongside the spatial design. Half of what people call "the atmosphere" is coming out of a speaker.
/ 005
Say the hard thing early
If a brief has a fatal flaw, you will hear it in the first meeting. We would rather lose the pitch than the project.
/ 006
Leave the tools behind
Clients get the source, the documentation and a trained operator. No black boxes, no ransom on your own show.
Disciplines
Who is in the room
08
Creative & Spatial
Concept leads, spatial designers, art directors and a scenographer who came from opera.
09
Engineering
Realtime graphics, embedded firmware, computer vision, show control and web. Half the team has a hardware background.
06
Fabrication
CNC, metalwork, textiles and finishing in-house, so a design change on Thursday is on the floor by Monday.
04
Sound
Composers and system designers working in ambisonics and object-based audio.
04
Production
Producers, a technical director and the person who knows which port the crate cleared.
Careers
Come be
a freak
We hire two or three people a year and read every application. Show us the strangest thing you have built.
Say hello