The loyalty platform concept relied on bringing supporters into a dynamic, character-driven world. To make this possible, we needed nine avatars, each reflecting a different background and personality, while remaining consistent with Inter’s iconic brand.

The non-negotiable constraint was time. With only 80 hours available for both creation and animation, a full manual CGI workflow would not work. We needed an approach that enabled rapid iteration, quick client alignment, and precise control over the final look.

We put visual AI at the centre of the process as a way to explore options quickly and reduce the time between creative decisions.

Our workflow focused on three key areas:

RAPID EXPLORATION
AI allowed us to generate a wide range of avatar ideas in a short period of time. This made it possible to test multiple directions early, gather feedback quickly, and identify a shared visual language with the client.

CRAFTED FINAL OUTPUT
Once strong starting points emerged, our team refined them through detailed compositing and retouching. Many avatars were built by combining the strongest elements from different AI outputs, adjusting expressions, poses, clothing details, and proportions to create a cohesive universe.

FREQUENT ALIGNMENT
To keep momentum high, we set up quick but regular check-ins with Inter. This drastically reduced approval bottlenecks. Once the visual style and individual avatars were locked, we used AI-assisted tools to generate gesture loops and final stills.

The hybrid model allowed us to deliver high-quality assets at a pace that wouldn’t have been possible with traditional production. Our final nine avatars featured 540 stills and 34 gesture loops.

This project confirms that visual AI can play a meaningful role in final production, helping teams work faster without giving up creative control. It also laid the groundwork for future character-driven experiences across the loyalty platform and beyond. 

R.O.A.D. is designed to digitise and safeguard one of the world’s largest archives of records from the transatlantic slave trade, many of which have never been publicly accessible. Alongside this monumental archival effort, the programme will establish the Barbados Heritage District, which will encompass an Ancestral Memorial to the Enslaved, a National Performing Arts Centre, a global Genealogical Research Institute, and a National Museum dedicated to accurately recounting the historic and contemporary impact of slavery and forced migration on Barbados. Together, it will create space for education, cultural celebration, and global conversation.

We were brought in to help build a brand strategy, visual identity, and digital experience that could carry the weight of history while inviting participation in the future.

Since establishing a regional hub in Barbados in 2023, our agency has been committed to creating economic opportunities and fostering local talent in the Caribbean. And as a certified B Corporation, the chance to co-create a platform that honours past generations and empowers those to come is the kind of impact-driven work that sits at the heart of our mission.

To build a brand strategy and visual identity that lived up to the R.O.A.D. Programme’s ambition, we had to start at the intersection of history and possibility.

At its core, R.O.A.D. is about uncovering, preserving, and sharing truths with the world. But it’s also about agency, empowering Barbadians to reclaim their story and radiate it outward as a source of cultural pride and economic momentum. With these factors in mind, we formed a strategy around a simple but powerful framework:

• Interrogate the past with honesty, transparency, and respect.
• Inform the present through education, design, and storytelling.
• Ignite the future by turning heritage into a catalyst for creativity, opportunity, and change.

At the heart of the identity is the African Sankofa symbol, which represents the concept of looking back and learning from the past in order to move forward and create a better future. We reimagined the symbol through a Caribbean lens, using the spiral as our guiding shape.

It symbolises the past feeding into the present, and the present unlocking the future. Its circular form also reflects Barbados itself, positioned at the centre of the Atlantic, sending ripples of history, resilience, and hope across the globe.

To complement the visual identity, we designed and developed the R.O.A.D. MVP website: the central platform introducing the initiative to the world. Built to inspire and inform, the site balances reverence and optimism, bringing R.O.A.D.’s purpose to life through clear storytelling and an emotionally resonant user experience.

The site applies the full brand system and is designed to scale with the programme. It lays the technical and narrative scaffolding for future digital experiences, such as Digital Reflections, where users can share and explore stories tied to the site, and a kids’ experience that’s designed to educate and engage younger audiences through interactive cultural exploration.

More than a launchpad, the MVP website is designed to be a platform for empowerment. It’s a digital space that can be taken on and evolved by the people of Barbados. It creates the foundation for a locally-driven creative and digital ecosystem, where new ideas, stories, and innovations can flourish. Built with flexibility, accessibility, and future expansion in mind, the site ensures R.O.A.D. is maintained in memory and propelled forward through local ownership, participation, and innovation.

ARtefact Adventures: Barbados is a pivotal component of the R.O.A.D. Programme that seeks to create an enriching experience specifically targeted to children. The mobile game invites kids to explore the unique culture, natural habitat, and history of Barbados through augmented reality, puzzles, and character interactions.

Through the adventures of Keisha and Justin, two passionate young Barbadians, players embark on a quest to discover artefacts that represent the essence of Barbados. By focusing on the island’s rich heritage, the game aims to instil a sense of pride and identity in Barbadian children, while also teaching children worldwide about the island’s cultural legacy.

The game integrates educational content with interactive gameplay to foster a deep connection between young Barbadians and their heritage, ensuring the stories and traditions of their ancestors are preserved and celebrated. At the same time, it empowers the next generation to carry forward these narratives, encouraging them to envision a future where their cultural identity plays a central role in global conversations.

ARtefact Adventures: Barbados extends its educational reach, giving kids and families around the world the opportunity to explore the island’s history. Through global engagement, the game helps promote culture exchange and understanding, allowing players to appreciate the uniqueness of Barbadian traditions while recognising universal themes of resilience, creativity, and community.

Through the R.O.A.D Programme, ARtefact Adventures: Barbados serves as a digital bridge, connecting the past with the present and inspiring children to contribute to a culturally rich future.

This isn’t just a government initiative, but a national consciousness in motion. The visual identity and digital platform we helped to create were both designed to evolve alongside it, adaptable enough to live across memorials, educational spaces, performances, policy platforms, and community conversations for years to come.

The ARTefact Adventures: Barbados game is set to launch in early 2026.

The contemporary cycling market is loud, crowded, and increasingly homogeneous. Everyone’s chasing the same aesthetic, the same language, the same vision of a pedal-driven future.

Raleigh had a choice between chasing the same trends as everyone else and rebranding itself into something completely unrecognisable, or, conversely, doubling down on its heritage and risk looking as though its eye was more on the past than the future. 

However, we refused to accept the idea that Raleigh’s heritage and its present were mutually exclusive. For us, the question wasn’t about the decision to pursue one or the other, but rather about how to make that history relevant right now.

Working in close collaboration with Raleigh, we sought to uncover an identity that would move their brand forward while staying true to the DNA that had propelled them.

As a heritage cycling brand, Raleigh isn’t about the past or the future. It’s about the experience of moving through a city on two wheels; the feeling of living authentically in the present. 

In this way, we realised that Raleigh is a brand that chooses its own path.

That philosophy informed every aspect of Raleigh’s transformation. The visual identity we created blends the old and the new seamlessly, with a style we called “heritage.”
 
We modernised the logo, bringing the iconic heron (a detail many brands would have quietly retired) back to prominence. The colour palette nods to history but pops on screen. Typography and visual language convey personality and boldness without abandoning recognisability.

The final result feels familiar, but not dusty. It’s fresh, but it doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard.

The centrepiece of the campaign that would debut Raleigh’s refreshed identity was the Raleigh ONE e-bike. This new product perfectly encapsulated a brand inspired by legacy and deeply connected to the present.

For the launch of the Raleigh ONE, we worked with a talented team of external folks that we chose based on their ability to embrace the “now” through their understanding of the current culture.

• Our photographer, Cas Kerssens, shot the campaign by drawing his unique style, which combines motion techniques, dynamic framing, and strong narratives to create work that feels both cinematic and grounded.
• Our director,  Kelvin Jones, applied his raw, emotional visual style to create a film that positioned the e-bike as something more than just a solution to an imaginary problem.

The final result follows the Raleigh ONE as it moves through neighbourhoods, styles, cultures, and eras, treating the city itself as a dynamic canvas and the bike as a participant in vibrant urban life.

This isn’t just a logo refresh with a few style guides. It’s a complete brand system that extends the “present tense” positioning across all aspects of the brand, including how it looks, how it talks, and (of course) how it moves. 

By building this identity to scale while keeping it rooted firmly in specificity, we helped Raleigh position itself powerfully and consistently across every channel.

For a brand that’s been around for 138 years, it’s a refresh that feels as distinctive as it feels honest. Not looking back. Not trying to predict the future. Just moving forward with character, confidence, and a clear sense of self.

From the beginning of our work, we understood that while this was precisely the kind of impact-driven work that aligns with our mission as a B Corp, good intentions wouldn’t be enough. Authentic cultural representation demands deep collaboration, not external interpretation.

To that end, we embedded ourselves within the Nyiyaparli community’s process. We worked hand in hand with the NLLP Cultural Working Group, senior language speakers, Nyiyaparli Rangers, and community members through multiple cultural workshops to ensure our approach was genuine.

Our game design choices reflected this collaboration and everything we learned from it.

Nyiyaparli Widi transforms players into “junior rangers,” collecting unique cultural items and learning everyday Nyiyaparli words through immersive gameplay. Players earn Paathupaathu! (“Respect!”) points as they progress, unlocking new levels and cultural challenges.

Key features include:

• Discovering and collecting authentic cultural artifacts
• Learning language through contextual, in-game interactions
• Exploring real cultural locations in Nyiyaparli Country
• Unlocking culturally relevant power-ups and tools
• Competing for high scores while building cultural knowledge
• Replay mechanics that reveal hidden cultural treasures

At the heart of the gaming experience is how these features come together to serve the larger cultural mission. 

During play, the game teaches new phrases and vocabulary in a way that sticks. However, at a much broader level, the game also helps inspire young people (and adults) to develop a connection to place, culture, and community.

Nyiyaparli Widi is simultaneously an educational tool and a celebration of a vibrant language and culture. Above all else, however, it represents a cultural lifeline. 

For Nyiyaparli children, it offers a pathway to connect with their cultural heritage in a format that speaks to their digital-native upbringing. For the broader community, it ensures that precious cultural knowledge doesn’t disappear with the passing of elders.

It demonstrates how technology can serve indigenous communities when the process is truly collaborative. By centring community voices and cultural protocols throughout development, we created something that belongs to the Nyiyaparli people—not something made about them.

Every time someone plays Nyiyaparli Widi, whether indigenous or non-indigenous, they are contributing to vital preservation efforts to keep the Nyiyaparli language alive forever.

Arm’s role in AI is pervasive, spanning industries, devices, and geographies through an ecosystem of 742 partners across 28 categories. This presented a unique opportunity to create a unique, premium visual expression that clearly positioned the brand as an enabling force ushering the world into the next era of AI.

DEPT® led the development of a bold new visual identity to match this ambition. Working closely with Arm’s C-suite, in-house creatives, and partner agencies, we designed a global design system that could flex seamlessly across touchpoints, from executive keynotes and brand campaigns to event activations and product launches.

Central to the identity is the Horizon Arc, a mnemonic graphic device that represents the drive to push boundaries and build a brighter future. This new direction embodies a minimalist, elegant, and modern design language where every detail is intentional—from color and gradients to typography, iconography, and layout. 

The creative direction confidently visualises the future: a premium, distinctive aesthetic that reinforces leadership across sectors from automotive to infrastructure. At every step, we focused on building a system that balances consistency with adaptability, ensuring Arm can show up with authority and clarity in every market it touches.

The impact of the new brand direction is already clear. In just one year, Arm’s brand value has increased nearly fivefold—from €223 million in 2023 to €1.1 billion in 2024—earning recognition as the fastest-growing European brand. The new visual identity is now spearheading a global brand campaign, positioning Arm at the forefront of the AI conversation.

Since launching the identity at CES, Arm has announced major milestones that align with its elevated brand presence, including becoming a main sponsor of the Aston Martin Formula 1 team and preparing to launch its first AI-focused chips in 2025.

At DEPT®, we believe pioneering creativity drives lasting business impact. This collaboration with Arm demonstrates how strategic, design-led thinking can unlock a brand’s full potential and help transformative companies communicate with clarity, confidence, and global resonance.

JBL had the scale and the spend. Its Amazon DSP campaigns were well-established and reached broad audiences. 

But they hit a common barrier: ad fatigue. Too many impressions to the same users were diluting effectiveness and burning the budget. The mission was to identify the optimal ad frequency that maximised performance without alienating potential buyers. Less repetition, but more relevance.

We worked inside the ultimate data clean room (AMC) to extract high-value insights and rebuild JBL’s media strategy from the ground up.

Here’s what we did:

• Mapped frequency sweet spots: we analysed 90 days of campaign data at the event level to identify the exact moment when metrics such as ROAS and DPVR peaked, and where they began to drop.
• Created a frequency audience: once we knew the optimal impression cap, we built a custom audience of users who had already hit it and excluded them from future campaigns.
• Reallocated budget with precision: we redirected spend toward fresher, high-intent users who hadn’t yet been saturated, ensuring every ad impression was working harder.

We set out to define a new approach to brand and product storytelling, interrogating existing site and categorical pain points, brand USPs, and consumer benefits. 

A deep understanding of existing headwinds and tailwinds helped us define a vision for the site that transitioned it from a traditional e-commerce experience to a resource for those seeking to elevate their performance and unlock what’s next—less about selling a product, and more about building brand momentum and excitement for what WHOOP enables. 

WHOOP originally built a following among elite athletes and professionals, but as it moved into its next chapter, it wanted to open the aperture of who was invited in — a pursuit reflected in the new site experience. 

We evolved the existing WHOOP audience to more granularly capture nuanced mindsets, behaviours, touchpoints, and points of tension, ultimately landing on three core audience segments against which to build the experience. We audited where the site fell short in addressing these new segments and identified areas of opportunity to tailor the experience accordingly.

We took our newly crafted audience segments and built comprehensive journey maps, pinpointing high-value moments for content and feature concepting. In tandem, the team explored several territories for the site’s new visual identity and aesthetic. This served as the basis for the overall design language and system.

Given the complexity of the product and the existing confusion around what WHOOP was, we needed to overhaul the existing information architecture. We created a new site map and conducted a comprehensive content strategy and mapping exercise for each page, identifying where new pages were required. 

We paired the newly minted visual identity with our content outlines to bring each new page to life. Motion was a major component of the new experience as well, and we used mechanisms like progressive disclosure to help audiences dig deeper without being overwhelmed with information. 

With a compelling new visual identity in tow, we developed a flexible design system that enabled us to integrate the data-forward storytelling of WHOOP with its new look. The system created intrigue around the product, connecting emotionally on subjective preferences like band colour, and functionally on utility preferences like feature sets.

We leveraged UX tactics like progressive disclosure to allow for moments of deeper discovery, all while reducing the amount of overwhelming data and information found on each page.

To ensure we moved ahead in a way that made sense to WHOOP audiences, we conducted a series of user tests to gain qualitative feedback and real user insights. We built over 10 comprehensive, fully functional prototypes that showcased different features and flows on-site, allowing users to envision the live experience. Learnings from testing allowed us to hone in on areas to both sharpen and build upon.

To fully realise the ambitious vision for the website, significant development work was required. The team implemented a Next.js front-end with Contentful CMS. To support WHOOP’s global reach, a custom localisation architecture was built using Contentful locales and the new Next.js app router. This was a large-scale Contentful application utilising the latest features. 

To achieve the desired level of customisation and flexibility, the team developed a fully modular system. This allowed every piece of the site to be customisable and reusable, with all content managed through Contentful. This modular approach not only streamlined the development process but also empowered the WHOOP team to easily maintain and update the site going forward.

Blue Apron needed to expand beyond its core media channels to grow efficiently. Rising costs and limited targeting options made it harder to find new customers at scale. The team wasn’t just looking for more reach, but better reach. Plus, higher-intent audiences, stronger engagement, and overall smarter media spend.

Amazon DSP offered an opportunity forward: access to exclusive first-party data (1PD), premium placements across Amazon-owned properties, and new tools like Performance+ designed to prioritise quality traffic over clicks. Alongside DEPT®, Blue Apron’s first major initiative on Amazon DSP was the ultimate opportunity to reach new audiences—in places where people were already shopping, streaming, or browsing with intent—while testing and optimising on the platform. 

DEPT® worked with Blue Apron to develop a media strategy that fully leaned into what made Amazon DSP different, and the first step was audience targeting. Instead of broad demographics, DEPT® used Amazon’s shopping and behavioural signals to find customers who already showed signs of being a fit. 

Every audience was selected based on relevance, not guesswork. For example:

• Whole Foods shoppers who bought frozen, healthy meals were deeply aligned with Blue Apron’s offerings and primed for conversion
• In-market audiences browsing meal prep tools indicated interest in home cooking, cost savings, and efficiency
• Lifestyle audiences that demonstrated behaviours prioritising wellness, sustainability, and premium food options matched the Blue Apron ethos

Blue Apron’s ad placement strategy was just as intentional. Ads showed up on Amazon.com when customers were actively shopping, on IMDb during entertainment browsing sessions, and on Twitch, connecting with a younger, tech-savvy crowd. Wherever the audience’s attention naturally went, Blue Apron was there with relevant and emotionally resonant messaging that evoked the joy of cooking (without having to do the grocery shop).

To drive further real business results, DEPT® and Blue Apron activated Amazon’s Performance+ beta. Launched in 2024, the tool is designed for non-endemic advertisers using Amazon DSP to harness 1PD and machine learning to automate and optimise campaigns towards a specific goal. 

Performance+ gave the team a new lever to move beyond basic click metrics and optimise campaigns towards Quality Site Visitors (QSVs), or users who stayed on-site long enough to show real interest. This helped Blue Apron focus its media spend on audiences that mattered most.

Throughout the campaign, flexibility was key. DEPT® built the strategy as a living framework, adjusting audiences, creative formats, and real-time placements based on performance. Insights from Amazon DSP reporting and Campaign Manager gave the team the visibility needed to optimise quickly and stay locked onto the KPIs that mattered: Quality site visits, sign-ups, and lower cost per registration.

The Performance+ campaign also proved extremely effective in building a pipeline of leads. Audiences driven by automated Performance+ tactics specifically had 65% higher sign-ups and maintained an 80–90% QSV rate throughout the campaign.

With stronger performance metrics, deeper audience insights, and a proven model for efficient growth, Blue Apron is doubling down on Amazon DSP. The success of this campaign reshaped how the brand approaches full-funnel media. As Blue Apron looks ahead, first-party data, premium inventory, and quality-driven optimisation will stay at the core of its strategy, and DEPT® will be right there to help keep scaling smarter.

It’s no surprise that a brand as energetic as Pit Viper’s moves fast—that’s why they chose to build their e-commerce platform on Shopify in the first place. However, to time the launch alongside the release of their redesigned Original 2.0 frames, Pit Viper needed to move even faster.

Designed specifically to eliminate barriers in launching and scaling Shopify for enterprise businesses, we accelerated the project with pre-built integrations, scalable components, and automation.

At the same time, we provided a super modern development stack. Where traditional Shopify themes rely on JavaScript and jQuery as their development standard, the components in our starter kit are all built using React, TypeScript, and Liquid.

A modernised, modular component-based system was the secret weapon Pit Viper needed.
Not only could the components be extensively customised to fit their site’s new theme, but they also offered Pit Viper greater flexibility in managing and updating their site content.

This flexibility marked a massive step up from their previous system, where each page, from Product Listing Pages (PLPs) to Collection Landing Pages (CLPs), had to be created from scratch.

Using the carefully refined components, Pit Viper could forget about the boring, time-consuming part of the content-creation process and put all their energy into making every pair of Pit Vipers look as kickass online as they feel IRL.

Of course, we also helped Pit Viper maximise all the best parts of Shopify.

By leveraging predictive search and PLP filters, users can sort their options by model, light transmission, lens technology, and colourway for both lenses and frames.
We also used Shopify’s metaobjects and metafields to make managing product data easy-breezy. This was another big win for Pit Viper, as with over 300 products spanning eyewear and apparel, staying on top of all those details was super essential but incredibly time-consuming.

We integrated Pit Viper’s Shopify implementation with third-party solutions, such as Yotpo, which the brand uses for product reviews, and Rivo, which powers Pitcoin, Pit Viper’s loyalty programme.

Pit Viper’s previous 90s Windows-inspired website reflected the brand’s quirky and playful personality. However, while some users seriously dug the old-school vibe, others were frustrated with the outdated experience and the site’s overall accessibility.

For the redesign, we needed an experience that was new enough to allow Pit Viper to correct the old site’s accessibility issues and also nostalgic enough to preserve the brand’s unique sense of cool.

It didn’t take long to find the perfect inspo in the work of everyone’s favourite Y2K technology (and turtleneck) icon. Hint: His name rhymes with Jeve Stobs.

To realise this vintage iOS-esque aesthetic, we customised the component library in our Shopify Starter Kit with 3D bubble buttons, scrolly carousels, rounded corners, and plenty of brushed aluminium—a.k.a. the certified Coolest Texture™ of the 2000s.
We also had a blast adding some more unique design elements to the site, including tons of Easter eggs with Pit Viper’s trademark sense of humour.

Best of all, thanks to the modern design and updated tech stack, we achieved an accessibility score of 80 or higher across all elements of the new site.

The Pit Viper site’s new look is more than just a facelift: It’s a fundamental upgrade. It may look straight outta the 2000s, but under the hood, it’s built to operate with a speed and efficiency that matches Pit Viper’s high-octane energy.

The modern tech stack we implemented through our Shopify Starter Kit provides a future-proof foundation for growth. At the same time, the modular components help Pit Viper manage their extensive product catalogue and create engaging content with unprecedented ease.

The result is an e-commerce platform that not only reflects the brand’s unique identity but also provides a robust and scalable engine for the Pit Viper party to continue growing bigger and better.

Combining multiple layers of generative technology to create a seamless, real-time interaction between a person and a digital character, the Talking Portrait isn’t just a clever chatbot with a face. 

It starts by generating video content to train a digital clone of the character, combining AI-assisted voice, image, and video generation. That clone is then brought to life via a custom-built interface and backend that manages streaming, queuing, idle states, and all the services required for live interaction.

The portrait is connected to a camera and microphone, allowing it to both hear and see the person standing in front of it. Using computer vision, it can identify details in the environment, such as facial expressions, gestures, or text, and respond accordingly. All of this is filtered through a large language model trained to carry on fluid, unscripted conversations. The result is an interaction that feels personal, intelligent, and occasionally uncanny in the best possible way.

Leaning into DEPT®’s Dutch roots, we chose to debut the technology with Rembrandt. Specifically, we used the 17th-century painter’s instantly recognisable, expressive, and historically rich Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul.  

Using a historical figure and iconic artwork as the subject made sense not only because of the richness of the source material, but also because cultural institutions are some of the most logical early adopters of this kind of technology. They already specialise in interpretation, storytelling, and visitor engagement. Talking Portraits add a new layer: interaction.

While the cultural space is a natural entry point, we built the technology to scale across industries. Education, in particular, presents a powerful use case. Imagine students interacting with subject-matter experts, fictional characters, or historic figures at any hour, in any classroom, in any language. The ability to deliver personalised, persistent, low-cost instruction or mentorship opens new possibilities in places where human resources are limited.

And that’s just one path. From training simulations to hospitality experiences, branded retail to entertainment, the potential applications of emotionally aware, AI-powered characters are as broad as the imaginations behind them.