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.
For our February Cog Night, we pressed play on James Rowland’s greatest ‘hut’, Team Viking streamed… more
More people are asking about our approach to sustainable websites. It’s great that people are asking…. more
We’ve worked towards a sustainable studio for decades. We’ve been inspired to share our approach. 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 Swamp Motel’s online game The Mermaid’s Tongue. Anna gives her… more
Working with Theatre Centre on a campaign to entice young people to this new show about… more
Bringing a much loved TV gameshow to life. A new website and smarter ticketing system for… 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.
English National Ballet continue to innovate and surprise; Jen explains how we worked with them to… more
A new website and a custom-built ticketing pathway for the UK’s iconic comedy venue. more
How can you monetise your digital content, using your ticketing system? Jen explains how we’ve helped… 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.
Our April Cog Night was an intimate evening with Mae Martin, via Zoom. A chance to… more
We shut up the studio and started working from home a year ago. Ed takes a… more
We watched Riz Ahemed’s stunning lockdown show, hosted on Manchester International Festival’s CogPlayer, for our Cog… 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.
Nottingham Playhouse is one of the UK’s leading producing theatres. With a new Artistic Director in… more
The Heritage Fund uses National Lottery money to help people explore, enjoy and protect the heritage… more
We attended a live-stream of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer for our second ever virtual Cog Night…. 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.
Last week Alex attended Culture Geek 2020. Here are his five takeaways from the digital conference. more
This immersive sound installation was our first live outing since March. Alex gives his take on… more
Alex recently gave a breakfast briefing on Creative Coding and Generative Art. Here he talks a… more
Kristina spent several periods with us as an intern during her studies at London College of Communication. When she graduated, with a first class degree, we were delighted to welcome her into the full-time team.
For our November Cog Night we enjoyed The Albany’s livestream of R.A.P. Party. Kristina shares her… 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.