We help arts organisations inspire their audiences.
We distil complex messages into simple, inspired, intelligent communication that demands attention.
You can call it consulting, branding, design, marketing or advertising. We don’t care what it’s called as long as you’re delighted with the results.
We are an agency obsessed with design and culture; that’s how we fill our days and nights. We have a monthly cultural outing that we call Cog Nights.
We firmly believe in the power of culture to transform lives. We work pro-bono to lobby for greater public funding and recognition in education.
Cog Design has a core, full-time team, based in our studio in Greenwich, plus a distributed network across Europe. We operate a flat and flexible creative structure; everyone is involved in the creative output of every project.
A designer by training, Michael founded Cog Design in 1991 and has managed the development of the company ever since.
He takes the lead on large-scale branding or complex communications projects and provides a creative overview of all of the studio’s output.
Beyond the studio, Michael is a Trustee at the National Campaign for the Arts, a Fellow of the RSA, an occasional lecturer in branding and design and a regular contributor to design journals.
In these strange times, when COVID-19 has us in lock-down, where’s the best place to get… more
I’m fascinated by VAULT Festival (I really don’t like using those capitals but that’s how they… more
For our March Cog Night we were at Greenwich Theatre for an immersive theatrical experience about… more
Anna is our head of design
Anna joined us in 2015. She leads our design team and oversees the day-to-day creative output of the studio.
She manages many of our larger and higher profile projects, working across branding, digital, campaigns and editorial design.
As well as client work, Anna oversees our monthly cultural calendar, commissioning a bespoke illustration and curating the content.
For January’s Cog Night we played The Crystal Maze Live Experience. Anna gives her take on… more
Branding for a project to address the lack of trained diverse talent within the theatre sector…. more
The Global Cultural Districts Network (GCDN) is a membership organisation, bringing together cultural and creative districts… more
Jen’s background is in theatre marketing, having worked at some of the UK’s busiest venues, including Brighton Dome, Soho Theatre, and Underbelly Festival. She manages our large-scale digital projects, keeping all the moving parts of projects on track.
February’s Cog Night saw us chasing round the streets of Southwark in this interactive piece by… more
Our regular round-up from the world of digital technology (or at least the bits that seem… more
A new, regular round-up from the constantly shifting world of digital technology (or at least the… more
Hailing from South Australia, Claire has extensive experience working across branding, print and digital design, with a strong interest in the arts and culture sector. Her dog, Scout, is an occasional studio visitor (and constant delight).
For our August Cog night we visited Underbelly at Southbank, to see Bowjangles (a string quartet)… more
For our May Cog night we ventured around the corner to Deptford Lounge to see the… more
Ed is our Studio Manager. If you call or visit the studio then it’s Ed you’ll speak to first; he’s also does our bookkeeping and maintains our impeccable admin systems.
An English graduate from Cambridge, he provides and maintains the perfect studio environment for our creative team to thrive.
On a stormy Sunday afternoon Ed took refuge in this paint-sodden exhibition at Camden Arts Centre. more
Parasol Unit are leaving their current London space. Ed went along to their final exhibition -… more
Ed shares his thoughts on one of January’s must-see exhibitions at the Royal Academy. more
In addition to our London base, we also have an international reach. We have a network of developers and designers across the globe. And, we have a pool of trusted Associates with specialist skills in the UK that we know we can trust, including developers, photographers, copywriters, illustrators and many more.
Razvan is an extremely experienced web developer, working across many development and CMS platforms. He manages ticketing integrations including our Spektrix plugin and API integrations, and integrations with EventBrite. He also takes the lead on much of our back end and server-based development work.
Emi’s talents extend across all areas of web development. He handles much of our complex database integration work and he has developed many of our tools for integrating CRM platforms, ticketing systems and collection management software.
Daniel travels the globe as an arts & culture digital developer. And he calls Tasmania his home. He’s a specialist in CRM integrations, with a focus on work with Tessitura and TNEW. He’s part of the very cool team at Dark Mofo and Mona.