Companion—Platform is an independent creative studio, currently: taking on projects for 2024. We specialize in web, brand, strategy, illustration, and image making. For all project inquiries, please send us an .

We develop visual and poetic systems that emphasize narrative and the natural world, designed and built holistically to cultivate meaning.

SERVICES

We operate as your creative partner in developing thoughtful brand strategies, designing distinct visual identities, and producing resonant imagery. Our areas of expertise are:

Exploration + Strategy

Creative + Art Direction

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High level concepting and research that informs the visual ecosystem and content of a project

Narrative Development

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Storytelling development and strategy to emphasize the depth, experience, and engagement of a project

Conceptual Development

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The research rich grounds from which meaning of a project grows

Design + Implementation

Brand Narrative + Identity Development

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The visual ecosystem developed to characterize the resonance of a project. This includes systems for typography, color, layout, motion, and design strategy across surfaces

Web + Digital Design

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The digital environment for a project to unfurl across screens and through interactions

UX/UI Strategy and Design

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Visual and interactive prototyping and development to ensure the digital experience is human centered, accessible, and supports the defined goals of a project

Illustration + Icons

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Assets developed with an editorial sensitivity to emphasize the poetic potential and impact of a concept or project

Photography

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A stylistic and conceptual approach and precedent for how images are rendered, visualized, and produced

Print + Packaging Design

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The material environment and application of a brand system across physical surfaces and dimensions

Special Commissions

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You name it! We are also interested in designing seed packets, interpretive / environmental signage, wine labels, and just about anything that positively engages the natural world and our relationship to it

For all project inquiries, please
email
us.
STUDIO

All of our senses are perpetually connected to the natural world.

interview
Are.na
GARTO
GARTO is a platform for exploring the continuities and intersections of the more than human world, and our entwined senses of self
Hiking the Headwaters of Sausal Creek
A guided tour of the Fern Ravine restoration site with Bay Nature and Friends of Sausal Creek
🔗 Read

How can expressions of attention deepen our relations to the shimmering ecologies we live within?

Visiting as a Mutually Nurturing Act of Attention
An interview with the artist & designer Caitlyn Galloway
🔗 Read
An Ode to the Observational Platform: A celebration of the places from which the world solicits our attention
An interview with Kevin McGowan of Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bird Academy
🔗 Read
Projects

A selection of our work for others. Each project is guided by a thoughtful process of research, experimentation, and production.

Earthling

Print collateral conceptualized and produced for Earthling, an outdoor ambient listening party in Golden Gate Park. Visuals for all assets were created using the spectrograms of calls of five migratory bird species likely to be apart of the sonic environment the day of the event.

conceptual development
creative direction
print design

Vicia Faba

A seed packet containing a single Fava bean, conceptualized and designed for the Are.na Gift Shop. This project began by imaging the possibility of a gift as a beginning rather than an end, and a seed as containing the alchemical potential of gift proliferation. Attention and care is given to a single Fava plant with the intention that its seeds will be collected and shared as gifts for others. Edition of 350. "To name the world as gift is to feel one's membership in the web of reciprocity." — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Purchase Vicia Faba

special commission

Small Press Traffic

Reimagining the visual voice and digital presence for Small Press Traffic, an organization supporting poets in the Bay Area for 50 years.

LIVE SITE + A note on the logo

website
creative direction
identity development
conceptual development
UX

The Greenhouse Project

Visual campaign and website for The Greenhouse Project, a profound community effort to save 770 Woolsey and transform a historic piece of land into an agricultural and educational hub for the Portola district of SF. Creative visioning: Caitlyn Galloway

LIVE SITE

identity development
website
print design
image creation
creative direction

The Collective

A print edition designed as part of a larger identity to accompany Antica Terra’s wine club, the Collective. Creative direction: Leigh Patterson

identity development
print design
conceptual development

MOLD Magazine

A series of photographs made to accompany Meg Miller’s column, The Visuality of Mutuality, in MOLD magazine.

conceptual development
image creation
editorial illustration

Our Seed Community

Design and illustration for Salmon Creek Farm’s seed mix, a very special collection of seeds gathered by many hands over many months from the SCF garden.

special commission

Bloomberg

Full-spread + spot illustrations drawn in dashes and dots for a story in Bloomberg Businessweek about Shell’s complicated history with and an uncertain future of becoming sustainable. Art direction: Saxton Randolph

editorial illustration

The Glories

A series of special labels drawn, developed, and designed for Antica Terra’s newest wine offering, the Glories. Creative direction: Leigh Patterson

identity development
print design

Alt-Text As Poetry

Concept + design for Finnegan Shannon and Bojana Coklyat’s Alt-Text as Poetry workbook set. Made in tandem with ATAP’s digital home, designed and built by Laurel Schwulst and Taichi Arimoto.

conceptual development
print design

Bloomberg Green

Full-spread ornamental and illustrative guide for an exercise in decoupling your 401k with fossil fuels. Art direction: Somnath Bahtt

editorial illustration

High Dawn

Publication + cover design for Small Press Traffic’s record of HIGH DAWN, a series of intimate digital gatherings organized during quarantine.

Purchase

conceptual development
print design
Illustration
Info
Please send us a note:
hello@companion-platform.org

Instagram / are.na


Companion–Platform is a creative studio founded by Lexi Visco and Calvin Rocchio. We are based in Berkeley, CA.

Lexi has a background in graphic design and illustration. Before co-founding Companion–Platform, she spent time working at Dropbox and BAGGU as a senior designer. She is a certified CA Naturalist, and holds bachelors degrees from both Gerrit Rietveld Academie in graphic design and from UCLA in art. Observation and curiosity are central to her process, guided by her time spent engaging with and learning from the natural world. She’s a diurnal trail runner and vespertine drawer, and carries a deep interest in birds. She is preferential to Brown Pelicans, and is currently on the look out for a White-Tailed Ptarmigan.

Calvin's path to design reflects the meandering movement of a river, with eddies in building gardens, studying philosophy, and imagining lamps as the perfect conceptual objects. Co-founding Companion-Platform was the moment of understanding the vastness of the watershed that feeds into the river, and wanting to make things in that watershed with others. Interests in pedology and the ways in which soil informs plant communities, durational movement through mountain spaces in the form of running and backpacking, and poetic observation of the natural world reflected in language and image all inform Calvin's practice.
SELECT CLIENTS:

2727 California Street
Antica Terra
Are.na
Bloomberg Green
Bloomberg Businessweek
Creative Growth
Dropbox
Everyday Oil
Feminist Bird Club
Internet Archive
Krupskaya
Margit Galanter
MOLD Magazine
Neverending Balloon
NIAD
Point Reyes National Seashore Association
Salmon Creek Farm
Finnegan Shannon
SFAC Galleries
Small Press Traffic
Taeyoon Choi
The Greenhouse Project
Wattis Institute
Wooden Spoon Herbs
TEACHING:

CCA MFA Design Department, Advanced Type + Experimental Publication, Spring 2020


TALKS + WORKSHOPS:

Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Graphic Design Department, Lecture, 2021

RISD, Graphic Design Department, Guest critic, 2021

CCA, MFA Design Department, Lecture, 2021

CCA, MFA Design Department, Thesis Review, 2020

2727 California Street, Weekly Community Print Workshop, 2018–2020
All rights reserved ©2024 Companion–Platform