The triangle is a structure of power that reveals its potency in realms beyond geometry.

At We Are Royale, the strength of the shape manifests in the leadership, a trio of founders whose complementary skill-sets fortify a business that has grown from a boutique design company specializing in network branding to a multi-city powerhouse with a global clientele that includes the likes of Nike, Samsung, MTV and E!

Those three partners are managing director Jen Lucero and executive creative directors Brien Holman and Jayson Whitmore. Together, they “form a trifecta of all the needs of the company,” said Holman. “Jen is the amazing producer and managing director. She’s holding all the cards of the business and keeping us all happy. Jay and I split the creative director duties, but even when we started our styles were complementary. I would swing a bit more on the CG side of animation and design, whereas Jay was an amazing editor on the 2D side.”

The trio’s harmonious union occurred in 2007, when fate brought them together to work on an Apple campaign for the now-defunct Exopolis agency. It was one of those extra-challenging projects that require hard work and long nights, and they pulled it off with aplomb. It turned out that as a team, “we worked really well and really efficiently together,” said Whitmore. But perhaps even more importantly, he continued, “we got done and we were actually still friends.”

Celebratory shots of tequila ensued, followed by a revelation: “We were like, ‘we might want to start a company together,’” said Whitmore.

What started as a fledgling company called Royale has, eight years later, become so robust, an updated name was decreed to reflect its expanded dimensions in both vision and capabilities, which have grown to include nuanced character work, live-action spots and richly detailed illustration.

We Are Royale is “a little more all-encompassing of all the things we can do,” said Holman, as well as a statement to the fact that with a bigger team and more to offer than ever, “it’s not about Jen, Brien or I,” added Whitmore. “It’s about all of us… None of this beautiful work would happen if it wasn’t a team effort. We do good work together.”

The new name is anchored by a brand refresh that includes the logo seen above, an overhauled website with a case-driven design, and this rather incredible video manifesto:

“We’re kind of like Voltron,” reads the copy in that epic anthem spot. “We work as a team, slaying creative problems with our mech-tiger swords.”

Two years ago, those swords lengthened and sharpened when We Are Royale opened a new digital branch – not in an industry hub like New York or its hometown of Los Angeles, but in the green-mountain majesty of Seattle (“New York is fantastic and fabulous but it’s also really expensive,” said Whitmore.) With it, came the usual assortment of websites, apps and other interactive experiences, but along the way We Are Royale also began to bring in some less likely jobs. In fact, the company has built a reputation for handling “offbeat projects that nobody really has solutions to,” said Holman, projects that are so unique they defy categorization.

For the above Coke Zero campaign, We Are Royale not only had to create a virtual ugly Christmas sweater generator (a tool that would render any combination of 1,324,405,261 total design possibilities) for anyone online to use, but also had to figure out a way to manufacture and distribute the top-100 vote-getters to their creators in time for Christmas – mere weeks after the campaign’s launch over Thanksgiving break.

“That meant we needed to produce 100 hand-woven sweaters in a very short time,” said Holman. After researching possible clothing vendors, they settled on a bespoke New York operation called Stoll America, who “were very familiar with a very small run in a very short time,” he continued.

The crazy thing was, it ended up being cheaper to knit the sweaters from the finest Italian cashmere in small amounts than to “order normal crappy sweater yarn in bulk. Each one of these sweaters [is worth] like $500 or $600… but it was cheaper to do it that way than to go through the proper channels to produce it for real, which means there are 100 lucky people with some ugly-ass sweaters that are made out of cashmere.”

Going from, say, producing IDs for MTV’s rock programming block “Pulse” to orchestrating the details of a limited-run fan-made clothing operation for a soda conglomerate is a transition We Are Royale would not have anticipated dealing with when it first began. But such are the demands of the modern design company, which must be as adept at, say, producing a dynamic title sequence for The CW’s The 100 as concocting a digital doppelganger of Chinese tennis star Li Na – a virtual puppet that communicated with fans in real time during the 2014 World Cup. With its three-part leadership structure tighter and stronger than ever, We Are Royale handled both projects over the last year, executing both flawlessly.

“The industry has changed a lot in eight years and we’ve changed a lot,” said Whitmore. “It’s an exciting and curious time we’re in right now… Now the television is the fourth screen; it’s the last screen we use these days, especially with kids. As a company we’ve had to adapt to new briefs that have come across our desk, to really interesting ideas and forward thinking ideas. The whole reason we got into this work is because we love solving problems, and we’re not scared of it. We actually welcome change and the ability to be part of changing and revolutionizing our industry… The crazier the idea, the more interesting it is for us.”

Tags:


  Save as PDF