Workhorse is an independent design and brand consultancy. We work with experts, entrepreneurs, and enterprise to build brand systems that hold under load. Founded in a Capitol Hill carriage house in 2014. Still here.
An independent practice, founded in a converted carriage house on Capitol Hill. Two partners, a long bench of collaborators, and one operating rule. The work has to last.
We treat the studio as a publishing house. We hire for curiosity, then trust people to write, photograph, build, and ship. Most of what shows up in the work was made inside this building first.
Drag, scroll, or pick a year. The chronicle is built from real engagements, real photographs, and notes published from the studio in the years they were made.
Workhorse opens in a 1902 carriage house on Capitol Hill. Two founders, a borrowed conference table, and a working theory. Brand is structural, not cosmetic.
Founded by Abe Garcia and TJ Cichecki.
A run of identity work for food, culture, and policy. Misfit Juicery, Lapis, Boodywear in early form. Every engagement gets treated as a long study, not a single deliverable.
Workhorse joins Hyperakt's On The Grid, a designer-led atlas of cities. We document our neighborhood storefront by storefront. The studio becomes a fixture on the block.
Notes archive opens. The studio starts publishing.
A heavier brand year. We launch Boodywear into US retail, refine Lapis, and start work that eventually becomes Eastern Market Mainstreet. DC Design Week becomes a fixture.
Content production comes fully under the roof. Tethered shoots, a dedicated photo bench. The studio becomes a publishing house as much as a design firm.
Print and digital work for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. The argument is simple. Policy reads better when it is designed to be read. It becomes a throughline for the practice.
The carriage house empties for a year. We re-tool around remote production, asynchronous review, and a more disciplined writing practice. The Notes archive grows.
A run of place-based identities for DC neighborhoods. Wayfinding, civic graphics, and small-business systems get treated as one connected practice.
Exhibition design and editorial work for the MLK Public Library. Archival materials, deep-cut typography, the largest project to date. Workhorse formalizes its exhibition practice.
When AFI Silverdocs leaves Washington, we build the new festival's identity end to end. A brand designed to outlast its first year.
A second outpost in Charleston, SC. Same operating principles, expanded geography. The carriage house remains home plate.
A decade of process gets compiled into software. The same brand systems we built by hand become tools, not templates, that run the practice and power the work.
You are looking at the early version of it.
A hundred and seven posts and counting. Essays on practice, field reports from neighborhoods, recent-work writeups, selections, and arguments made out loud. The archive is the practice in long form.
“The best designers I've known are not just designers. They are curious people who have chosen design to express themselves.”
“Policy reads better when it's designed to be read. Five themes: empowerment, professionalizing, unapologetically Black, comfort and care, community.”
“A designer-led atlas of the cities we work in. We picked our home block and started writing about it.”
“For our last in-house shoot, we took our first shot at shooting 100% tethered. Less time, less cost, more consistent work. Clients and designers happy.”
“A design studio is a neighbor before it is anything else. The work changes when you take that seriously.”
“Twenty years on, the manifesto still asks the right question. What should design be in service of?”
Photographs from inside the building. Long table, north light, library wall, plants. The studio is a working space and a writing room — both record themselves over time.
“We do not program a horse. We build a relationship with it. The same is true of a brand.”
The work is brand, system, exhibition, web, strategy, and content — but the team is one team. Engagements move across disciplines without changing hands.
Identity systems, naming, voice.
Authenticity is not a destination, it is a point of departure. We combine research, strategy, and design thinking to turn ideas into brands and brands into beliefs.
Tokens, components, governance.
Design systems are a living element of a brand. We build intelligent systems that hold across platforms, teams, and time.
Spatial, environmental, archival.
Multidisciplinary work with experts and institutions. Stories told accurately in natural, virtual, and imagined space.
Web, product, content surfaces.
Engineering as a continuation of the brand. We design and develop solutions that function beautifully across screens and mediums.
Positioning, platform, message.
A strategy custom-fit to where you are and where you are heading, whether you are launching, experimenting, or scaling.
Editorial, photography, film.
In-house production lets us work fast and consistent. Branded content and campaigns kept on the same brief from concept to delivery.
A small selection of shipped engagements. The full catalog lives in Work; this page is just the marker.
Partner. Strategy + Design
Founded Workhorse in 2014 after graduate work in design at MICA. Leads brand strategy and design across the practice, from first conversations to the systems that outlast them.
Partner. Production + Operations
Co-founded Workhorse in 2014. Leads production, operations, and the studio's in-house content practice. The long tail of getting work made and out the door.
Pulled live from the Internet Archive. Each snapshot was the public face of Workhorse in its moment. The work behind the site has been the same throughout.
