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 is a regular commentator on design and communications, in the press and as a speaker. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a mentor with University of the Arts London and has recently finished a five-year tenure as Executive Chair with the National Campaign for the Arts.
Michael thinks it’s time to be honest with ourselves, to admit that even great theatre doesn’t… more
Yesterday saw the launch of the latest edition of Arts Index – a statistical health check… more
We all know we should use apostrophes correctly. But do we know how? Michael guides us… 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.
From global cultures to natural wonders. Squeezing a world of content into South London’s most interesting… more
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
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.
Working with an amazing team as they prepare for their role, centre-stage in City of Culture. more
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
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.
We went on our first (virtual) Cog Night in a while. Ed gives his account of… more
Ed’s picked out some key points from the government’s new guidelines for performing arts. more
We’ve been separated from our studio for three months; Ed looks back at our lives in… more
Emma is a specialist in user experience and user interaction design. She manages the design of many creative projects, working closely with our project managers and developers throughout the process. She has a particular passion for visual arts.
A fundraising virtual tea party. Count us in. Emma’s love for sweet (and savoury) treats, meant… more
With an MA in composition, Alex trained as a musician before turning that mix of creativity and analytics towards the sphere of websites. He oversees many of our ongoing relationships, providing unique insight and focused project management. Outside of the studio, he’s a trustee at Drake Music – leaders in music, disability and technology.
Alex recently gave a breakfast briefing on Creative Coding and Generative Art. Here he talks a… 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.