Independent design studio · est. 2018 · Lisbon & remote

A dark studio for brands that work after midnight.

Noctule builds identities, interfaces, and films for music labels, late-hour software, and the kind of company whose customers show up at 2am. We take six clients a year, and we obsess over each one.

See the work How we engage

02 open slots for Q3 2026 · next intake closes 28 Jun

Editorial music macro of a black vinyl record on a vintage turntable with the needle resting on the grooves in warm window light

Featured case study 2026 · 11 weeks

Halcyon Records — brand & player

We gave a 40-year jazz label a body that breathes at night.

Identity Web player Motion Vinyl system

The studio, in numbers

open

Projects shipped

214

since 2018

Avg. engagement

9.4 wk

−1.2wk vs '24

Awards on the shelf

+3 in 2025

Clients who return

73 %

3-yr cohort

Three people, one room, no account managers. The person who pitches you is the person who designs it.

WGD ’25 · D&AD Wood view shelf →

Late nights spent with

Halcyon CINDER CASSETTE Nocturne Brightwave drift/fm Volt& Lighthouse Halcyon CINDER CASSETTE Nocturne Brightwave drift/fm Volt& Lighthouse

Editorial music photograph from a studio control room — large mixing desk and glass window to a live room with hanging mics under warm amber LEDs

The room · 11:42pm · Lisbon

The studio

Small on purpose. So the work stays sharp.

We started Noctule because the best ideas kept arriving after the office had gone home. So we built a studio around that hour — three senior people who design, write, and build the thing themselves. No pitch theatre, no junior hand-off, no deck that outlives the work.

Sofia Leite

Founder · Brand & type

Ex-Pentagram. Draws letterforms by hand before any tool opens.

Marcus Tobin

Partner · Product & code

Ships the interfaces he designs. Believes a prototype beats a mockup.

Hana Suzuki

Partner · Motion & film

Cuts the films, scores the loops. Came to us from a music-video house.

Where we are

A second-floor room in Príncipe Real, Lisbon. We work with clients in 14 timezones and meet most of them at night.

How a project runs

From first call to launch night.

No two engagements are identical, but they all move through the same four movements. We over-share early and ship in public.

01 Week 1

Listen in the dark.

A two-day immersion — interviews, an audit, and a moodfilm. We come back with a single sentence the whole project answers to.

02 Weeks 2–4

Draw three worlds.

Three distinct directions, each fully art-directed — not three colours of the same logo. You pick a world; we go deep.

03 Weeks 5–9

Build it for real.

Identity system, live site or app, motion, and a guidelines doc your team can actually use. Coded, not faked in Figma.

04 Launch + 90d

Stay on call.

We don't disappear at handoff. Ninety days of edits, new assets, and a standing line for whatever launch night throws at you.

Case study · Halcyon Records

A 40-year jazz label, rebuilt for headphones at 2am.

Halcyon had a deep catalogue and a website that felt like a filing cabinet. We rebuilt the identity around a single idea — a record breathing — and shipped a web player where the whole interface dims and pulses to the track you're hearing.

A reactive web player — average session time went from 4:10 to 19:38.
A vinyl reissue system designers can run themselves — 38 sleeves and counting.
Catalogue subscriptions up +61% in the quarter after launch.

Read the full Halcyon story

halcyon.fm — now playing

live

Blue in Green

Halcyon Reissue · 1959

3:42 / 5:37

Avg. session

19:38

Catalogue plays

1.4M

Subs lift

+61%

identity · player · motion · vinyl 11 weeks

Engagements

Three ways to work with the room.

Fixed scope, no hourly billing, no surprise invoices. Pick the shape that fits — we'll tell you honestly if you don't need the bigger one.

Nightcap

2–3 weeks

€9,500

fixed · one sprint

A focused burst — a launch landing page, a brand refresh, or a pitch film.

One deliverable, fully art-directed
Two rounds of revisions
Source files + handoff call
14-day support window

Start a nightcap

Most chosen

Full Build

our signature

€48,000

fixed · 8–11 weeks

A complete world — identity, a coded site or product, motion, and a system your team can run.

Identity + three explored worlds
Live coded site or product UI
Motion kit + a 60-second film
Living guidelines doc
90-day on-call after launch

Book a build

On Retainer

monthly

€7,200

/ month · min. 3 months

For brands we've already built — we stay close and ship a steady stream of work.

A reserved week each month
Campaigns, drops, social systems
Direct line to all three partners
Priority on your launch nights

Ask about retainer

In their words

What it's like to be a Noctule client.

"They sent us a moodfilm with a soundtrack before they'd drawn a single logo. By then I already knew the brand was right. Nobody works like this."

Diego Sastre

Founder · drift/fm

"The site they built reacts to the music — it's the first time our catalogue felt alive. Subscriptions jumped 61% in a quarter and our oldest fans noticed first."

Aaliyah Greene

Label Director · Halcyon

"We almost hired a 40-person agency. Three people delivered something braver, in half the time, for a third of the quote. The mezcal sells itself now."

Ines Calderón

Founder · Cinder Spirits

Before you write

The things people ask first.

Can't find it here? The fastest answer is a 20-minute call — grab a slot and bring your messiest question.

Do you only take dark, moody brands?+

No — that's just our voice, not a constraint we put on you. We've built airy, bright systems too. What we care about is whether a brand has a real point of view; the palette follows the idea, not the other way around.

Why only six clients a year?+

Because the three of us do the work ourselves, and we refuse to be in two pitch rooms at once. Six is the number where every project still gets a partner's full attention from kickoff to launch night.

Do you actually code the sites, or hand off Figma?+

We build them. Marcus ships the front-end in a real framework — Next.js, or hand-written for a microsite — so the motion, the reactive bits, and the type rendering are exactly what you saw in review. No "the dev will figure it out" gap.

What happens if I hate the first direction?+

That's why we show three fully-explored worlds, not one. If none land, the Full Build includes a reset round at no extra cost — we'd rather redraw than ship something you're lukewarm on. It's happened twice in 214 projects.

Who owns the work, and the source files?+

You do — full IP transfer on final payment, including layered source, fonts we licensed on your behalf, and the codebase in your own repo. The only thing we keep is the right to show the work in our portfolio after you launch.