About the studio

Small on purpose. Serious about craft.

Twenty-two strategists, designers, engineers and marketers who would rather ship one great product than ten forgettable ones.

Meet the team Work with us

[ Our story ]

2014 Founded, still independent

Started at a kitchen table in 2014.

Leila and Marcus left a large agency because they were tired of watching good ideas get lost between departments. They started Signal & Form with one rule: the people who pitch the work are the people who do the work. Eleven years and 140 launches later, that rule has not changed.

01Independent and founder-led since day one
02B Corp certified: we report on our social and environmental impact
03Four-day work week for the whole team since 2022
04Two per cent of revenue goes to pro-bono work for non-profits

See how we work

Principles

What we believe

Six principles we use to make decisions when the brief does not tell us what to do.

01

Outcomes over output

A beautiful screen that nobody uses is a failure. We agree on the numbers that matter before we open a design file.

02

Show, don’t tell

Working prototypes beat long documents. You will click through real software within the first two weeks.

03

Accessible by default

Every product we ship meets WCAG 2.2 AA, because one in five people lives with a disability.

04

Plain language

No jargon in proposals, no surprises in invoices. If something is late or over budget, you hear it from us first.

05

Sustainable pace

Rested teams make better decisions. We plan realistic timelines and keep them.

06

Leave it better

You get documented code, a design system and the training to run it without us.

Timeline

Eleven years in six moments

From a two-person studio to an independent team of twenty-two.

2014

Two founders, one client

Leila and Marcus launch Signal & Form with a website for a neighbourhood bakery.

2016

First mobile app

A booking app for a physiotherapy chain reaches 50,000 patients.

2018

Engineering team

Arash joins to lead engineering; we start building complex platforms in-house.

2020

Growth practice

Nia builds our growth marketing team so launches keep performing after go-live.

2022

B Corp and a four-day week

We certify as a B Corp and move the whole studio to a four-day week.

2025

140th launch

Twenty-two people, three continents of clients and still independent.

The team

The people you will work with

Senior specialists who have shipped products at start-ups, agencies and some of the country’s best-known brands.

01

Leila Rahimi

Founder & Strategy Director

Leila has led product strategy for start-ups and national retailers for fifteen years. She runs every discovery call she can and still sketches every sitemap by...
02

Marcus Bell

Co-founder & Creative Director

Marcus shapes the look and feel of every Signal & Form project. Before the studio he designed campaigns for sports and music brands across North America.
03

Sofia Marin

Head of Product Design

Sofia leads UX and UI design and our accessibility practice. She has run more than 400 usability tests and believes every product should work for everyone.
04

Arash Karimi

Engineering Lead

Arash leads our web and mobile engineers. He cares about fast pages, clean code and deployments that happen on a Friday without anyone worrying.
05

Nia Okafor

Growth Marketing Lead

Nia built our growth practice from scratch. She has managed more than ten million dollars in ad spend and loves a well-designed experiment more than a viral pos...
06

Daniel Moreau

Client Partner

Daniel makes sure projects run on time and on budget. He writes the proposals, keeps the project board honest and is the first person to call when something cha...
07

Maya Haddad

Content & Brand Strategist

Maya writes the words that make brands sound like themselves: naming, messaging, websites and launch campaigns, in English, French and Arabic.
08

Elena Petrova

Senior UI & Motion Designer

Elena designs the interfaces and animations that make our products feel alive, and she makes sure every animation respects people who prefer less motion.