At the Office with Flint

As design enthusiasts, we love to connect with people who are creating memorable and meaningful things. Our friends from Flint envision beautiful brands (including the fresh update of The Willows Inn), and we're so proud to know they use the Ratio Eight in their studio.

We asked them some questions about the back story of their studio.  

How did Flint get started?

After many years at brand and advertising agencies, Flint’s founders Blake Abel, and Tyler and Brooke Eide ventured out to create a studio focused on helping build compelling brands and effective visual communication. Our studio opened in 2015. We believe design has a job to do, and good design is considered and objective. This has been hard to find, even in a big PNW city like Seattle. We have been lucky enough to find really like-minded clients, who believe in the same things we do, and trust us to help their brands. Our team now consists of 6 designers, and creators with the same vision - helping craft brand identities, and interiors that are clear, inspired, and alive. Being in the beautiful neighborhood of Pioneer Square in Seattle, helps fuel this creativity and culture.

Brooke and Tyler are our fearless creative leaders coming to work every day with their Instagram famous pup, Crosby. Tyler started out as a multi-disciplinary graphic designer working with noteworthy clients like Xbox, Microsoft, and Intel. Brooke controls much of our interior design work, and art direction at Flint. She has years of experience in art direction, interior design, and branding, and has contributed to award winning creative work at world renowned agencies and companies. They both live in Queen Anne and find time to walk to work at least a few times a week.

Blake also lives in Queen Anne with his wife Janelle and two kids, Rowe and Raylee. Before co-founding Flint, Blake started his career working at esteemed national agencies. His experience has led him into developing successful communications, product, and brand strategies for some of the world’s most well known brands and startups.

What does Flint do?

As a company we want to have happy employees, happy clients, and do great work that has an impact. Our studio focuses on brand strategy and positioning, brand identity systems, and visual communication. This has led to creating iconic marks and interiors for brands like Mr. Holmes Bakehouse, and other fun and engaging lifestyle brands. Our team is built around our mutual desire for quality in all facets of design, and we believe our core differences as individuals strengthen our offering and widen our perspective. We believe providing a diverse spectrum of talents brings a lot of value to our clients.

What's next for the Flint team?

We really want to continue designing really cool things for clients, and putting our heads together everyday. Recently, we have had the opportunity to explore our own passion projects and ideas, brand them, and watch them grow. We are excited to see what happens, and how they impact our studio next year.

How do you use Ratio in your office?

Our routine is really simple. Blake is usually the first to show up to the office and goes straight to the Ratio. He grinds up enough coffee for a full carafe, adds the Ratio handblown glass carafe, and hits go. Though none of us are exceptionally skilled at making coffee, we are all obsessed with it, and typically go through 2 carafe’s every morning. We love the Ratio, because the taste is consistently so good. Living in Seattle, we often get "coffee snobs” who visit our office or work with us during the week, and they all have been really impressed with the taste of our coffee and style of the Ratio. As a design studio, its important that it is beautiful to look at.

Lastly, having the Ratio in the office is really nice because it keeps all of us in the studio, instead of breaking out in twos to venture to the closest coffee shop. We like getting in, sitting in the conference room together, drinking coffee and starting our day.