Industries
Design for deep tech and hardware companies
Semiconductors, sensing, energy hardware. The engineering is usually excellent and the commercial story is usually a decade behind it.
2020 Red Dot Design Award
MIT Design LabWhy the usual agency work does not survive contact with your engineers
The pattern is familiar enough to be boring. A brand agency arrives with a mood board, the copy gets simplified until it is technically wrong, and the CTO kills the launch. Simplification is the wrong instinct for a technical audience. Making the depth easy to find is the right one.
Frontgrade Gaisler builds radiation hardened microprocessors that fly on missions across the solar system. Engineers search for LEON and NOEL-V by name. Procurement leads want proof the company will still be supporting the part years from now. Both land on the same site, and the architecture has to serve them without talking down to either.
The other thing that breaks is scale. A brand built for one product line in one country stops working the week you have four product lines and buyers on three continents. FreePower had run as two names for years, Aira the company and FreePower the product, and consolidating them was a commercial decision before it was a design one.
What usually brings people to us
Six situations. Most companies arrive with more than one of them.
The site undersells the technology
Frontgrade Gaisler's case study opens with it: world class technology, a digital presence that did not reflect it. Nobody had done anything wrong. The site had simply stopped keeping up with the company.
Two names, one company
Product brand and company brand drift apart, and then sales explains the relationship on every call. FreePower consolidated Aira and FreePower into one brand, and we rebuilt the website and the app interface around that decision.
You are going from a national market to an international one
TG0 needed to move past its UK roots and be credible to buyers who had never heard of it. Branding, digital strategy, copywriting, SEO and animation, plus a partner program to reach markets a small team cannot cover directly.
Your buyer is a committee with opposite needs
The engineer wants the datasheet in two clicks. The procurement lead wants evidence of standing. The CEO wants a company that looks like it belongs in the category. One site has to hold all three.
Search only works if you know the words engineers use
High intent search in deep tech is specific: part numbers, standards, architectures. For Frontgrade Gaisler that meant product families like LEON and NOEL-V, typed by people who already know exactly what they need.
Distributors and partners carry the sale
Hardware sells through channels. Without partner categories, enablement material and somewhere to get it, a partner defaults to whichever supplier made their job easiest.
What we do for technical companies
Five services, usually combined.
Brand systems for technical companies
Logotype, colour, typography and visual language, derived from how your buyers decide rather than from a mood board. Built to hold up when an engineer looks closely.
Websites structured around product lines and buyer roles
Architecture designed for several product families and several buyer types at once. For Frontgrade Gaisler that meant complex requirements and diverse roles served without overwhelming any one of them.
Technical SEO for specialist search
We map the terms your buyers type, part numbers included, then build the content architecture to catch them. Sourcing Allies went from invisible in Google to the top result for sourcing in China.
Product and app interface design
Where the hardware ships with software, we design that too. FreePower's app interface was rebuilt alongside the brand so the two stopped contradicting each other.
Partner programs and sales material
Partner categories, commercial logic, portals and the decks a partner needs. TG0 and Frontgrade Gaisler both needed this to sell beyond their home market.
How a project runs
The same five phases every time, whatever the technology is.
- Phase 1
Decode the business
Before design starts we map the business model, the product lines, the buyer roles and the market position. This is the part that stops the copy from being wrong.
- Phase 2
Workshops with your team
Engineering, sales and leadership in one room. Deep tech companies usually keep their best messaging inside the heads of two engineers nobody has thought to ask.
- Phase 3
Structure and messaging
Site architecture, product hierarchy and the language for each buyer type, agreed and signed off before visual design begins.
- Phase 4
Design and build
Brand, visual identity, website, illustration, video and interface design. Frontgrade Gaisler and TG0 were both written, designed and launched by us end to end.
- Phase 5
Launch, then keep going
SEO, content and partner material after launch, because a deep tech site earns its position over quarters rather than weeks.
How we work with your team
Technical companies have usually been burned by an agency that did not do the reading. Here is how we avoid being the next one.
We do the reading
On FreePower we spent hours making sure our team understood the technology, the vision and the customer promise before we proposed anything. That is the standard for every technical project.
Your engineers review substance, not styling
Technical accuracy is checked by the people who know it. Layout and visual decisions are ours to defend.
Decisions early, then speed
Direction is settled in the first weeks so the build does not stall in rounds of opinion.
You keep the system
Brand guidelines, design tokens, components and documentation, handed over so your team can produce new material without us.
Work in deep tech and hardware
Four projects, four different kinds of technical company.
Frontgrade Gaisler
Radiation hardened microprocessors for space. Brand evolution, an information architecture rebuilt around how aerospace and defence buyers evaluate vendors, technical SEO, and a partner program structure.Read the case study
TG0
A UK technology platform that needed to be credible internationally. Branding, design, digital strategy, copywriting, SEO, animation and a partner program with the material behind it.Read the case study
Freepower
Two brands consolidated into one, then a second evolution as the company moved from a technical position to a lifestyle one. Website, app interface, art direction and video.Read the case study
ProtoAnything
Prototype manufacturing, fast and fairly priced. Logo, website, communication and illustration, built to make a technical service straightforward to buy.Read the case study
Related pages
FAQ about design for deep tech companies
Do you understand technical products well enough to write about them?
We have written for radiation hardened processors, touch sensing hardware, wireless charging and industrial AI. The method is the same every time: workshops with your engineers, then drafts they mark up for accuracy. We do not simplify the engineering, we make the depth easy to find.
Will you make our product sound less technical?
No. Simplifying a technical product for a technical buyer is how agencies lose the CTO in week three. The goal is a site an engineer can go deep in and a procurement lead can take confidence from, in the same visit.
Can you help us rank for part numbers and specialist terms?
Yes. Frontgrade Gaisler's SEO work targeted the specific search behaviour of high intent buyers in aerospace and defence, including product families like LEON and NOEL-V. Sourcing Allies went from invisible in Google to the top result for sourcing in China.
We sell through distributors. Do you build partner programs?
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do: partner categories, commercial logic, onboarding, portals and enablement material. Our channel partner methodology has been used by more than 150,000 people worldwide, including teams at Canon and Tele2 IoT.
Do you design the software that ships with the hardware?
Yes. FreePower's app interface and website were rebuilt together, so the product experience and the brand stopped pulling in different directions.
How long does this take?
Frontgrade Gaisler ran six months. FreePower has run over a year across two phases. A brand and website project is the shorter one, and adding product design or a partner program extends it.
Where are you based?
Gothenburg, Sweden. We work with companies across Europe, the US and Asia.
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