They shipped in three weeks and it still feels finished.
Every studio we spoke to quoted four months. Kestrel asked what the launch date was and worked back from it. The brand holds up a year later.
About
Four people. One studio. Since 2020.
Kestrel is a design and development studio in Portland, Oregon. We design brands, websites and products and we build what we design, so what you approve is what ships.
Our story
Small on purpose.
Ines started the studio in 2020 after ten years inside product teams, tired of watching good design die between the agency and the engineers. The answer was a studio where the same four people do both. Six years and sixty-eight projects later it is still four people, and the work still ships on the date we name.
The studio in numbers
- 6
Years, one team
- 68
Projects shipped
- 31
Days, median brief to launch
- 9 in 10
Clients who come back
The team
The people who do the work.
Ines Kestrel
Founder, design director
Started the studio in 2020 after ten years in product teams. Still designs every brand.
Tom Adeyemi
Technical director
Builds the systems the sites run on and teaches the client's team to run them.
Priya Nair
Product designer
Research, flows and the hard screens. Has shipped three products used by more than a million people.
Leo Brandt
Motion and film
Launch films, interface motion and the small moves. Edits in the dark room at the back.
How we work
Four rules on every project.
Clients
Cronos · Vesper · Kroma · Pulse
Vanguard · Northline · Halden · Marrow
Kroma · Pulse · Vanguard · Northline
Clients
What they say a year later.
Maya Lindqvist, co-founder, Cronos Systems, Client since 2025 The first agency that let our team own the site.
We have changed every page ourselves since launch. Nothing has broken. That was the brief, and they took it seriously.
Daniel Osei, head of marketing, Pulse Architecture, Client since 2025 Honest about what we did not need.
Half the first call was them talking us out of work. What we did build paid for itself on the first drop.
Sofia Marin, founder, Vesper Studio, Client since 2026