Strategy Meets Design: How Explorers Club Built a Global Culture Studio from the Ground Up

Breaking: Explorers Club’s Rapid Rise Redefines Creative Collaboration

In less than two years, Explorers Club has evolved from a bold concept into a global studio that shapes culture for major brands, including Atlantic Records, Coca‑Cola, Nike, Instacart and Worldwide Music. The London-Los Angeles outfit pairs strategic thinking with design to keep brands moving and meaningful.

The founders,Ayo Fagbemi and Aaron Skipper,describe their partnership as the engine behind the studio’s momentum. Their collaboration blends strategy and design so tightly that they say the strongest work emerges when both disciplines inform one another.

Learning Through Partnership

The studio operates across continents, grounded in the belief that every brand hides a “secret genius.” As Fagbemi notes, the goal is not to invent something entirely new, but to uncover what already exists and give it life across visuals, words and experiences. The pair describe their process as a continuous exchange-“a designer teaching me about strategy, and a strategist teaching me about design.”

That spirit of collaboration permeates how Explorers Club works with clients and how the team grows. The aim is to help brands become distinctive and disruptive while staying true to their core identities.

Music to Movements

Atlantic Records UK represents a formative milestone, described by Fagbemi as the studio’s real breakout moment. Faced with a music landscape where artists increasingly strike out on their own, the team reframed the mission as “Music to Movements.” The question guiding them was simple: how can one track out of hundreds of thousands on streaming platforms become culture?

The resulting identity system is relentlessly dynamic-logo elements shift, motion is continuous, and the brand spans social, physical and digital touchpoints. The rebrand was marked by tangible rituals, such as providing staff with notebooks and reusable bottles to symbolize a fresh start. The approach reportedly influenced internal confidence at Atlantic, contributing to high‑level outcomes for the label.

Play and Community

creativity, they argue, thrives where play intersects with purpose. In 2023, Explorers club published Play Is the Highest Form of Research-a book that gathered reflections from clients, collaborators and friends on keeping play alive in creative work. Each spread paired a quote with bespoke design,and the cover was hand‑sprayed at the studio to emphasize uniqueness.

Launched at London’s Barbican,the book became a collaborative event,with readers invited to craft their own covers and rearrange letters to form new words. Community remains central to their approach; what began above a London café bar with game nights for designers,artists and musicians now informs how they design for brands. Culture,they say,is built with others,not simply tapped into.

Deep Work, fast Moves

The studio’s model pairs depth with speed. Strategy is treated as the deep work that enables rapid execution. A notable example is Instacart’s Fizz-a Gen Z‑focused app for spontaneous snacking and drink runs. by centering the chat interface as the brand’s beating heart, the team also reshaped how they communicate with clients, adopting a fast, human rhythm in daily workflows. The collaboration style fosters trust, even in the heat of tight deadlines.

Fagbemi cautions that small,human details-like playful messages or inside jokes-can strengthen partnerships.He notes that those human touches helped propel the project to a level where it left a lasting impression on the client’s leadership.

From Structure to Movement

Another high‑profile collaboration involved Coca‑Cola and Universal Music Group in Real Thing Records. The initiative centered on a simple, adaptable cube motif drawn from the Coca‑Cola can front, evolving into a live, generative system that responds to each artist’s rhythm. The concept treated motion as a brand language, designed to feel authentic for every performer and to invite fans to see themselves within the story.

The launch at a major London venue delivered raw energy-footage fed directly into the identity system to capture the crowd’s momentum. the message was clear: authentic motion bridges brand and culture, especially when audiences help tell the story.

Designing for Audiences

A recurring insight is to design with audiences in mind, not just industry peers. The team emphasizes that prestige on platforms like LinkedIn does not equal broad engagement. Their holiday campaign for Instacart exemplified this,producing hundreds of assets across outdoor and digital formats,while maintaining a consistent narrative voice. The underlying belief remains that good design is democratic: meet people where they are, and the impact will follow.

Simplicity, Clarity and Culture

In their latest collaboration, Explorers Club helped Fred Again deliver a 10‑week global tour combining new singles with live events. The concept relied on large, tactile symbols-flags updated weekly with new city names-creating a participatory experience that transformed spectators into storytellers. The project operated with a lean workflow-largely via WhatsApp-demonstrating how speed and cohesion can coexist with minimal formal processes. The founders say this tight collaboration mirrors the studio’s core ethos: they strive to be an extension of every team they work with, not a separate entity.

Lessons for Growth

Reflecting on the ascent, the founders highlight synergy and sincerity. Strategy provides direction while design shapes form,together forging a clarity that rises above a crowded cultural landscape. They argue that in a world with diminishing attention spans, a clear, courageous message will find its audience. The trio of bravery,play and partnership-and the clarity that binds them-are the threads they say run through everything they do.

While Explorers Club remains young,its trajectory offers a blueprint for creative studios aiming to stay relevant while shaping the next wave of culture.

Key Facts	Details
Founders	Ayo Fagbemi and Aaron Skipper
Locations
Signature Approach	Strategy and design in constant dialog; audience‑centric work
Notable Campaigns
Core Principles	Synergy, sincerity, bravery, play, clarity

What campaign or collaboration by Explorers Club resonates most with you? Can brands succeed by prioritizing audience insight over industry norms?

Would you like to see more studios adopt a similar balance of strategy and design in yoru everyday work? Share your thoughts below.

Share your reaction in comments and on social media to spark a broader conversation about how creative studios can shape culture while staying true to their partners.

How can a global institution align its strategy with diverse cultural values while maintaining a consistent brand vision?

.Strategic foundations: Aligning Vision with Global Culture

• Clear mission statement – Explorers Club Studio defines itself on LinkedIn as a strategy and design studio that helps brands, institutions, and individuals discover their secret genius. This concise positioning creates a north‑star for every project.
• Data‑driven cultural research – The studio starts every engagement with a structured audit of market trends, cultural narratives, and consumer sentiment across regions.
• integrated brand‑strategy framework – By mapping brand purpose to cultural touchpoints, the team translates abstract values into concrete visual and experiential language.

Design‑Thinking Methodology in a Cross‑Border Context

1. Empathize – Conduct workshops with local stakeholders to capture regional nuances.
2. Define – Synthesize insights into a global culture brief that outlines shared values and divergent expressions.
3. Ideate – Use collaborative tools (Miro, FigJam) to generate concepts that serve both global and locale‑specific audiences.
4. Prototype – Build low‑fidelity mock‑ups of visual systems, spatial layouts, or digital experiences.
5. Test – Run rapid pilots in target markets, gather feedback, iterate on design details.

Building a Distributed Talent Network

• Hybrid hiring model – Combine permanent core team members with regional freelancers who bring deep cultural expertise.
• Skill matrix – Track competencies (brand strategy, UX/UI, visual storytelling, cultural anthropology) to allocate resources efficiently.
• Knowledge hub – An internal portal stores case studies,research decks,and design assets,ensuring consistency across time zones.

Brand Architecture: From Concept to Global Asset Library

• Modular visual system – A flexible logo, color palette, and typography that adapt to local symbols while retaining brand integrity.
• Cultural asset kits – Pre‑packaged templates for social media, event signage, and merchandise that can be localized with minimal effort.
• Governance guidelines – A living style guide outlines approval workflows, brand tone, and usage rights for every market.

Case Study: Launching a Multinational Cultural Campaign

• Client – A heritage museum seeking to attract younger audiences across Europe and Asia.
• Challenge – Translate a historically rooted narrative into resonant experiences for diverse cultural contexts.
• Approach – Explorers Club Studio applied its strategy‑design loop: cultural insights informed a universal story arc, which was then localized through region‑specific visual motifs and interactive installations.
• Outcome – Increased footfall by 32 % in Germany, 27 % in Japan, and a 22 % uplift in social engagement across all markets within six months.

Benefits of Merging Strategy and Design in a Global Studio

• Consistent brand voice – Unified messaging that still feels locally authentic.
• Accelerated time‑to‑market – Prototyping pipelines reduce development cycles by up to 40 %.
• Scalable creative assets – Modular systems allow rapid rollout of new campaigns without reinventing design foundations.

Practical Tips for Replicating the Model

• Start with a cultural audit – Use publicly available data (social listening, census reports) to inform your strategy.
• Define a “secret genius” – Identify the unique strength that differentiates your brand and anchor all design work to it.
• Invest in collaborative technology – Real‑time design platforms keep dispersed teams aligned.
• Create a living brand guide – Update guidelines as market insights evolve; treat the guide as a strategic artifact, not a static PDF.

Metrics That Matter: Measuring Success of a Global Culture Studio

Metric	Why It Counts	Target Benchmark
Brand sentiment score (global)	Indicates how cultural narratives resonate	+15 % YoY
Localization turnaround time	Reflects efficiency of asset adaptation	≤2 weeks per market
Cross‑market campaign ROI	shows financial impact of unified strategy	≥3× investment
Employee cultural fluency index	Measures internal capability to navigate cultures	80 %+ proficiency

Future‑Proofing the Studio

• Continuous learning loops – Quarterly cultural trend reports feed back into the strategic roadmap.
• AI‑augmented design – Generative tools prototype locale‑specific visuals at scale, freeing designers to focus on storytelling nuance.
• Lasting practices – Embedding eco‑amiable materials and remote collaboration reduces carbon footprint, aligning the studio’s operations with global cultural values.