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SEVERE™
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Manifesto +
We built the brand for the most controversial company in technology: its language, its look, its logic. We took the founder’s singular vision, translated it into something people could hold on to and feel, and made an indecipherable product impossible to ignore — on the ticker, on the tactical edge, on the pit wall, on the chalet at Davos. In our view, mystique is deliberate withholding; controversy is evidence of consequence — the same instrument, held at different angles. You have an opinion about that company. And that was the point. Most brand work is an apology: three safe directions, a committee, a palette that tests well and dies quietly. It’s built to be approved at the expense of being believed; nothing that’s merely approved is ever remembered. Severity is a method before it’s a mood: fewer decisions, made earlier, defended harder. We bring one direction because we’ve already scrapped the other ninety-nine. We’re a small group of designers, strategists, and filmmakers. There’s no account team, no junior bench, no one to hand you off to — the people who made the brand you know are the people who will make yours. We’re not interested in doing nice work; we’re here to make you unavoidable, whether you’re twelve people or twelve thousand. Come to us when nice stops working.
Personnel +
K. Kitev +
Director of Operations
LinkedIn
He started his career at Google, was later a VP at J.P. Morgan, and built M&C Saatchi World Services’ production operation from zero to nineteen people across fourteen countries, for governments and institutions that mostly cannot be named, which suits everyone involved. At Palantir he led creative production across EMEA, took AIP from prototype to its first public film in two weeks, and built the internal capability that delivered the Ferrari creative partnership. Since then he has run his own consultancy, embedding inside AI and defence companies including Vantor, Poolside, and Legora. He treats production as the distance between an idea and a fact.
F. Pomykalo +
Creative Director
LinkedIn
He spent his early career at Pentagram, Wieden+Kennedy, Landor, Mother London, and Further, on work for Nike, Coca-Cola, Dell, Rolls-Royce, Johnnie Walker, and Nokia. As Global Creative Lead at Palantir he built the brand across every platform — AIP, Foundry, Gotham, and Apollo — and handed it to more than four thousand colleagues who used it every day. Brand, to him, is infrastructure: it only works if the person who has never opened the guidelines can still use it without breaking anything. Since then he has led brand design at FluidStack through a period of fast growth. He measures a brand by how well it holds up once he has left the room.
Ž. Rosić +
Creative Director
LinkedIn
He has directed brand work for Apple/Beats, Dell, Ford, Google, Omega, and Vanity Fair, and for the LA 2024 Olympic bid. Fourteen years in, he has spent eight of them building, leading, and scaling design teams on both sides of the agency and in-house divide. As Global Head of Brand and Comms Design at Palantir he led the design for the Airbus, BMW, and Novartis deployments and the Scuderia Ferrari partnership. He works from Detroit, most recently with Normal Computing. His method is subtraction: he reduces a form to what it cannot do without, and it still has to say something.
N. Smith +
Director of Strategy
LinkedIn
He was one of Robinhood’s first fifty employees, where he built the company’s user education, and the first external hire onto Palantir’s Content Strategy team. At Palantir he led communications for the Airbus, BMW, and NHS deployments, built the UK team, ran product launches and conferences, and owned strategic communications and marketing for the Scuderia Ferrari partnership. Ultimately he ran the global org, whose remit was the company’s: land and expand the business, and win the argument in public. Since then he has been CMO of Valarian and Director of Communications at Poolside, a frontier AI lab now part of NVIDIA, through its first public model launch. He earned a double major at Dartmouth — highest honors in Studio Art, honors in English.
Permanent Associates
P. de Guzman
VP of Marketing Scale AI
LinkedIn
C. Duma
Creative Lead Palantir
LinkedIn
Inquire +
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