Design & technology studio — est. 2014

We make complicated
things feel simple.

Kern partners with ambitious teams to design, build and ship digital products people actually want to use — strategy, brand, product and engineering under one roof.

Start a project See selected work
Years in practice
12
Products shipped
140
Countries
9
  • Halversen
  • Orbit Labs
  • Kestrel
  • Meridian Health
  • Atlas Foundry
  • Northwind
  • Pale Blue
  • Strata

01 — What we do

Four disciplines,
one team.

Most projects fail in the handoffs between agencies. We keep strategy, design and engineering in the same room, on the same schedule.

01

Strategy & Positioning

We find the sharpest version of what you do, then say it in words that survive contact with the market. Research, positioning, naming, messaging.

  • Market & user research
  • Positioning and narrative
  • Information architecture

02

Brand Systems

Identity, voice and a design system your team can run without us. Built as tokens and components, not a folder of PDFs.

03

Product Design

Research, interface design and prototypes that get signed off in weeks rather than quarters.

04

Engineering

Accessible, fast front-ends and the APIs behind them. We write the code we designed, test it against real devices, and hand over a repository your team can own.

  • Front-end & design systems
  • APIs and integrations
  • Performance & accessibility audits
  • Team handover and training

02 — How we think

Most work dies in the gap between the deck and the deploy. We closed that gap in 2014 and never reopened it.

You work with the same three people from the first call to launch. No handoffs, no account managers relaying your brief secondhand.

Read the studio notes

03 — Selected work

Things we
shipped.

A few recent engagements. Results measured twelve months after launch.

  • 2025 Halversen Logistics Fleet operations platform −31% dispatch time
  • 2024 Orbit Labs Developer analytics suite 2.4× activation
  • 2024 Meridian Health Patient intake system +38% completion
  • 2023 Atlas Foundry Brand and commerce site 3.1× conversion
  • 0 Products shipped
  • 0 Clients who return
  • 0 Countries worked in
  • 0 People on the team

04 — In their words

We had been through two agencies before Kern. They were the first people who told us what to cut.
Dana Whitfield COO, Halversen Logistics
They shipped in ten weeks what our previous team could not ship in a year.
Ravi Menon VP Product, Orbit Labs

05 — The engagement

Four steps,
no surprises.

Fixed price, fixed dates, and a working artefact at the end of every week.

  1. 01

    Talk

    A two-hour call. We ask hard questions and we listen to the answers.

  2. 02

    Shape

    Two weeks to a plan you can hand to anyone: scope, sequence, price.

  3. 03

    Build

    Weekly increments in the open. You see the work, not a status deck.

  4. 04

    Keep

    We stay on as a retainer, or hand over clean and stay out of the way.

06 — Contact

Tell us what
you're making.

Send a note and you will hear from a person — usually the same person who would run the project. No discovery-call funnel.