VARIANT-01®
Variant-01 is an independent design studio partnering with ambitious AI and B2B teams. We work closely with founders to make complex products easier to understand, trust, and choose.
Retainer
$8000 / Month
One-time
Scoped per project
Project proposal for Minerva
Prepared by: Sai Satvik
Prepared for:
Justin Liao
We’ve taken the time to internally review your project and summarized some of our key findings on this document. Here, we will cover notes from our review, goals for this project, pricing, timelines and some relevant projects. The goal is to briefly explain what a partnership with Variant-01 could look like.
Most studios design to impress other designers. We design for the buyer reading the fine print, the investor doing diligence, and the team who has to grow with the brand long after launch.
01
Built for trust, not hype
We design for AI products that experts have to believe in. Every decision is made for the buyer who reads the fine print, so your brand holds up in sales calls, procurement reviews and your next raise.
02
Senior hands on every pixel
The person on your first call is the person designing your brand. No handoffs to juniors, no account managers in between, just direct access to the people actually doing the work.
03
Fast without cutting corners
Landing pages in a week, full sites in four, brands in six. We move at startup speed because we’ve done this many times, not because we skip the thinking that makes it last.
04
One system, not two projects
Brand and website are designed together, so your logo, type and pages speak the same language from day one. No mismatched agency handoffs, no rebuilding the site when the brand changes.
05
Proof from funded teams
We’ve worked with venture-backed teams in AI, audit and enterprise software, including Offset and Midship, both later acquired. We know what founders need right after a raise.
06
Built to grow with you
Every site ships on the platform that fits your team, with clean components and a CMS your marketers can run without us. When you need more, Design Partner keeps us on call every month.
View Recent Work
We’ve worked with founders building in AI, audit and enterprise software. Here’s what they say about working with a senior-led studio that treats their launch like it’s our own.
Variant-01 was a pleasure to work with from day one. They moved fast, kept everything efficient, and were always available when we needed a quick turnaround, which mattered a lot on our timeline. It felt like working with someone who genuinely cared about our launch. We’d happily work with them again.
Justin Liao
COO, Minerva
We had a complex product and struggled to explain it simply. Variant-01 brought real clarity to how we talk about it, and translated those ideas into a website that’s clean, focused and easy to follow. Prospects get what we do much faster now.
Aahel Iyer
Founder, Midship
Working with Variant-01 made our redesign smooth and stress-free. The process was clear, efficient and never dragged. The new website communicates our product far more clearly than before, and it finally feels like it matches the quality of what we’ve built.
Raj Khare
Founder, Offset
Variant-01 redesigned the Lynkk.ai website at a key moment for us. We knew what our product did but struggled to explain it simply, and they turned that into a site that’s clear, sharp and genuinely feels like us. Fast, thoughtful and easy to work with. We’d work with them again.
Samarth
Founder, Lynkk
Variant-01 was great to collaborate with. Thoughtful design, clear communication at every step, and a real effort to understand our product before designing anything. Easy to recommend.
Maria Tavierne
Founder, Branded Native
No black boxes, no surprise delays. You’ll know exactly what happens each week, what we need from you, and when you’ll see it, from the first kickoff call to the day you launch.
Brand
Moodboarding
Brand Strategy
Before we launch full-steam into creative work, we develop mood-boards that visually showcase the findings from our brand research phase. This includes references from a wide range of resources, coming together to form cohesive visual systems.
Deliverables:
Brand Research Findings
Messaging / Tone of Voice
Moodboards
The goal here to craft a unique brand narrative and thesis. This phase often involves a lot of open conversation and aggregated insights. We avoid a purely “statistics approach” to brand strategy and like to get in the weeds through thoughtful communication, so we can put our finger on what it is that makes you authentically you.
Deliverables:
3-5 Unique Moodboards
Brand Explorations
We treat each brand concept as it’s own separate identity and prepare a presentation that begins with a core brand idea, messaging and tone ofvoice. Each brand concept will include it’s own art direction, typography, visual system, and design language. We typically pitch 3 core branddirections to start with. In these explorations, we try a wide range of visual techniques to conceptualize various brand directions.
Deliverables:
Core Brand Presentations
Visual Explorations
Brand Iteration and Revision
This is where we really nail down the brand. We trim the waste, extend the brand and bring in creatives to take the brand to the next level. Often,these changes are holistic iterations and not "make the colour more sharp". The goal by the end of this stage is to get the develop the brand to it’s final form.
Deliverables:
Illustration
Motion Design
Graphic Design
Logomarks
We'll spend 1 full week on iterating logomark options and trying out a cohort of ideas. At this stage, we will be much more iterative with a tighter feedback loop in order since Logomarks are traditionally an asset that needs a lot of back and forth in our experience.
Brand Development
This is the core brand execution that typically involves building out the brand further into specific deliverables that will enable you to use this brand at scale. This process involves involves both producing net new creative assets and documenting + defining existing brand assets.
Deliverables:
Social Media Assets: Defining a collection of social media assets (posts, banners, logos, etc)
Illustration & imagery kit: Documenting a collection of brand artefacts
Visual System: Defining and documenting a visual language
General Brand Usage: Extending usage across different branding touchpoints
Conceptual UI: Exploring opportunities to express the brand through UI and product screens.
Website
Website Design
This includes design and iteration of a marketing website (up to 10 pages) based on our brand guidelines and design language. We'll create layouts, illustrations + diagrams, animations, iconography, and other design language assets required.
Development
Here we will develop out final designs in Webflow / Framer / Next JS, set up stylesheets, build out any CMS collections, add a class-naming system (if applicable), and make your website seamless across devices. Also 5 pages.
Extended Assets
Product Design
Design and iteration of key product flows and interfaces, focused on creating a polished and intuitive user experience aligned with the brand’s visual language.
Deliverables:
Product flows
High-fidelity UI
Reusable components + design system
Merchandise
Ideation and concept exploration for custom branded merchandise
Deliverables:
Merchandise concepts
Event mockups (booth design, banners, signage)
Internal Branding
Conceptual Sub-brands for external brand materials
Brand Video
We believe that the coolest brands best come to life with something that truly grabs your attention. At this stage, we will use our brand assets to put together a unique animated launch video to announce the new brand system.
Full Brand
Prepared for: Minerva
Prepared by: Variant-01 Studio
Total Project Cost: $12K USD
Total Project Duration: 6 weeks
Services: Strategy, Brand Explorations, Iterations & Revisions, Logomarks, Brand Assets, Deck, Merch, Brand Video
Full Website
Prepared for: Minerva
Prepared by: Variant-01 Studio
Total Project Cost: $8K USD
Total Project Duration: 4 weeks
Services: Website Design, Website Development, CMS collections
Core Brand + Website
Prepared for: Minerva
Prepared by: Variant-01 Studio
Total Project Cost: $14K USD
Total Project Duration: 7 weeks
Services: Strategy, Brand Explorations, Iterations & Revisions, Logomarks, Website Design, Website Development
Full-Cycle
Recommended
Prepared for: Minerva
Prepared by: Variant-01 Studio
Total Project Cost: $20K USD
Total Project Duration: 10 weeks
Services: Strategy, Brand Explorations, Iterations & Revisions, Logomarks, Brand Assets, , Deck, Merch, Brand Video, Website Design, Website Development, CMS collections
Design Partner (Retainer)
Prepared for: Minerva
Prepared by: Variant-01 Studio
Retainer package: $8k/month
For teams after launch that need design every week but not a full-time hire.
Covers: new landing and site pages, pitch and sales decks, campaign and social assets, product marketing visuals, site updates.
Next Steps (after proposal review and approval)
When you’re ready, we'll send over a contract
We’ll communicate through our decided channel(s) - usually email or Slack
Everything project related exists within your Figma Updates- moodboards, progress, etc
We get started!
Recent Clients
Govdash: $40M Series B
Minerva: $35M Series A
Midship: $4.7M Seed
SPLX: $9M Seed
Offset: $1M Seed
Lynkk: Raising
Meridian
Branded Native
Questions and Answers
How to ensure we get your best work?
Our best work comes when clients stay on top of feedback loops and client-side deliverables. Acting fast and making decisions makes thedifference in meeting timelines and getting a high-quality product out.
What if we don’t like the direction?
You’ll see 2 to 3 directions before anything is finalized, and each stage includes 2 rounds of revisions. If after week 3 you feel it isn’t working, we can stop and you keep everything made so far.
How do we communicate?
We're big fans of asynchronous communication and we like to use Slack and Loom for project management and feedback. That said, we canschedule weekly meetings to walk through progress and deliverables if needed. Usually, we can start with on-call updates as we learn to work witheach other and then move to async updates (via Loom) as we progress through the project.
How many projects do you take at a time?
Only a few, so every client gets senior attention. That’s also why start dates are booked in advance, and why each proposal holds its slot for 7 days.
Check the 60-day offer in “brand first, website later”: $12K brand + $8K website already equals the $20K Full-Cycle, so that promise costs you nothing and nudges them to come back.
Can we pay in a different way or split payments?
The standard is 50% to book your start date and 50% before launch. Full-Cycle can be split into three payments.
What happens after launch?
You get all source files, a walkthrough of how to edit your site, and 2 weeks of fixes. Many teams then move to Design Partner at $8K/month for ongoing pages, decks and campaign work.