Formerly known as Derrida Associates, the company started out in 2001 as a copywriting agency and branding consultant, delivering effective and creative copy to conceptualise or punctuate advertising campaigns, marketing collaterals and corporate reports. Our creative heritage comes from linguistics and semiotics.
By 2003, it was handling ATL projects with key accounts such as Mitsubishi Electric, Hitachi and Best World Lifestyle. The latter was to become a success story whereby Derrida Associates provided creative direction during its branding campaign and that of its retail brand - Avance Living - and leading up to its successful IPO in 2004. Best World Lifestyle won the Singapore Promising Brand Award in 2004.
The years passed and we achieved numerous milestones, such as handling the crisis PR management surrounding Anita Mui in 2003/4 here in Singapore for Modern Beauty Salon (Hong Kong), and coordinating an important fundraising event for the Children's Cancer Foundation in Ngee Ann City. The company changed its name to Levitate Studios in mid-2004 to signify its new direction to elevate brands, as well as reflect the increasingly diverse portfolio it now handles, as well as its new brand directions that has grown beyond copy to encompass branding, design and public relations.
Our mantra for all that we do: clarity and refinement.
The areas of our expertise: branding, design and public relations.
We work like this: consider the whole picture, maintain purpose and complete lucidity, refine the execution and develop the laws of attraction.
Brand design is the only thing separating bottled water from tap water.
It may seem like a waste of money to spend on intangibles like beauty, design and branding. But happiness, the Internet and our entire human consciousness are intangibles.
There is never enough time for the pursuit of perfection, but we have the talent to get pretty close.
The rumors are not true that we keep a blacklist of clients who constantly request changes to artwork simply for the sake of changing it.
A mathematical graph exists correlating the amount of time with the quality of work. Frequent moments of sheer inspiration help us to jump-start to a higher point on the left side of that graph.
1. We bridge the gap between what is traditionally regarded as two polar opposites: business strategy versus branding and graphic design.
2. We design with a branding strategy in mind first. We study your company, your business, your brand, what people think of you and where you want to head towards or what you want to communicate.
3. There are some agencies who work like artists, designing for the sake of design. Their end results may look aesthetically pleasing in a gallery or a graphic design magazine, but their work ends up being unidentifiable with the brand or unaligned with marketing and communication objectives. Conversely, the work we do is always pushing the bar one level higher while still being relevant and accessible.