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About
Freelancers first.
Partners by choice.
Four disciplines. Decades of independent work. ANY BRAND. ANY SCALE. ONE STANDARD.
The Story
How we got here.
Four people, the better part of two decades each, all doing this on our own. A designer. A photographer. A videographer. A web builder. Our own clients, our own reputations, our own way of holding it together when the deadline's on fire. Not interns working up a ladder. Media producers running real businesses for real clients.
Becoming partners didn't make the work better. It was already good. What changed is what we look at. We stopped thinking like media producers and started thinking about the business behind every piece. Why the deck doesn't close. Why the homepage doesn't convert. Which photo runs first.
We built one shop because, honestly, we got lucky with who we know. Four crafts, one direction. Design, photography, video, and web and systems, each run by a lead, with creative direction above all four deciding what gets made and why. Ninety-three years across the five leads and nobody under fifteen. Behind each lead, a bench we've worked with for years. The team gets bigger. The standard doesn't move.
Over 200 brands have trusted us with theirs, big and small. The names got big, but the names were never the flex. A few from this year alone: Hunt Brothers, Shell, Pennzoil, Lowe's, Trimble, Ford Performance. Here's the part that matters more. We'll work with almost anyone. Big brand, small brand. Dialed in, or halfway there. Doesn't matter to us. If you love what you do and you want it to grow, we put in what you put in. A full production or a mom-and-pop shop. Same crew, every time.
The Founder
Founded by
Ian Courtright.
Style Driven started with Ian Courtright, a creative who spent years on both sides of the work: making it, and watching businesses pay for work that didn't move anything.
Today Ian bridges the whole network. Style Driven for creative production. Voding for web and software. psst.studio to get found and get booked. Different names, one standard, one person making sure nothing leaks between them.
The Difference
WHY ONE CREW BEATS FIVE VENDORS.
Not a portfolio you like the look of. A team you can hand the whole brand to and not think about again.
01
These big brands we've worked with don't hand the keys to a vendor who needs hand-holding. We've earned that level of trust. You get the same team.
02
Each discipline has a lead who runs their own team. Design, photo, video, web. Not generalists faking range. Specialists who own it.
03
We scale up for a full production or down for a one-room shop without changing who shows up or how good the work is.
04
One crew across everything means the design matches the photo matches the video matches the site. Five vendors can't promise that. We can.
How We Operate
01
One team, end to end
The designer who builds your brand also art-directs the shoot. The editor who cuts your video understands the visual system. No handoffs between strangers.
02
Fifteen years minimum, every time
No junior bait-and-switch. The people in the room are the people doing the work, and nobody running a lane here has under fifteen years in it.
03
Built around yours
Retainer or project. One discipline or all four. We scope to what you actually need, not what fills our pipeline.
The Team
Five leads. Ninety-three years.
Nobody running a lane here has under fifteen years in it. That is the argument. You are not hiring a shop that staffs up around your project, you are hiring people who have already done this for most of their careers and have worked together long enough to stop explaining themselves to each other.
Creative Direction
20+yrs
Has done the work in design, web, photo, and video before directing any of it. Sits between you and the crew so the brief only gets translated once.
Photography
22yrs
Product, lifestyle, and event. Runs the shoot from lighting plan through final selects.
Web and Systems
20yrs
Front end, back end, and the admin behind it. Builds the thing that has to keep running after launch.
Design
16yrs
Brand systems, campaign creative, packaging, print. Builds the system, not the one-off.
Video
15yrs
Pre, production, post. Boards through final color, with the crew scaled to the job.
Behind the leads
Designers, front and back end developers, and full photo and video crews we scale per production. Our own gear and our own space, plus access to more when the job calls for it.
How work gets approved
Every deliverable goes through its lane lead, then through the creative director. Nothing leaves that both have not signed off on.
Who We Work With
Two kinds of partners.
Small & Mid-Size Businesses
Brands that take their presence seriously
You've outgrown the freelancer lottery but you don't need a payroll line. One team handles the brand, the assets, and the consistency, project by project or with a fractional CMO on retainer.
See Services →Agencies
Agencies that need a production arm they can trust
White-label production under your name. We crew, shoot, design, and build, then hand it back for you to ship. Your client sees your brand, your invoice, your win. They never see us.
How White-Label Works →Philosophy
What we believe.
Creative work has to build recognition.
The viewer never thinks about the design. They just trust the brand. If it doesn't make someone remember you, it's decoration.
Every business has the same problem.
People don't know why they should choose you. Industry, product, price point: almost irrelevant. We solve for that. Every time.
We're not a vendor. We're a partner.
Vendors execute tasks. Partners tell you when the task is wrong. One service or four. One-off or ongoing. Replacing the hire you can't justify, or working alongside the team you have.
Every touchpoint is a deposit.
Every surface your customer touches either builds recognition or erodes it. Consistency is how you compound. We make sure nothing leaks.
The Disciplines
Design. Photo. Video. Web.
Recognizable on sight.
Design.
Identity, collateral, digital, packaging. One system across everything.
Trust before a word is read.
Photo.
Product, lifestyle, portraits, events. Where most start.
Content people watch.
Video.
Commercials, social, recaps, testimonials. Trust fast.
Visitors into customers.
Web.
Sites, apps, tools, automation. Built to convert.
Worth Saying
We're not for everyone.
That's intentional.
We don't compete on price. We don't chase every lead. We take on work we can do well and say no to everything else.
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If you don't really care about your business, we're not going to care more than you do.
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If you want the cheapest option, there are plenty. We're not one of them.
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If you like what you do and you want to grow it, we'll put the same into growing your business with you.
Join Us
We're always looking for
the right people.
We got here by getting lucky with people. We keep looking for more of them. Not just talented. The kind who take the craft seriously and want to work with others who do.
See Open PositionsFAQ
Questions about Style Driven.
A few things people ask about how we work.
Because running a serious business should not require managing five different vendors who don't talk to each other. Style Driven was built to be the one team that covers design, photo, video, and web so the output actually matches.
Consistency beats inspiration. Systems beat one-off assets. The brand you show up as every day is worth more than the brand you show up as on a campaign. Style Driven is built around making that the default, not the exception.
People looking for a yes machine. If you've never heard a vendor tell you "that's not the right call," you've been working with the wrong vendors. Style Driven has opinions and says them out loud.
A team of specialists. Design, photo, video, and web each have people who lead them. Style Driven is not a freelancer with a logo. The work spans disciplines because the team does.
Charlotte, North Carolina. Clients are across the country and abroad. Most of what we do runs remote, and we travel for shoots when the work calls for it.