Whatyoushouldknow about us first.

You can't judge this book by its cover.Most studio websites are built around a portfolio. Ours can't be. Most of what we've worked on over the last few years is under NDA. Some of it as a production partner to agencies, some for brands that don't want the work talked about publicly. We could fight this, or we could tell you what it means.

It means you won't click through a grid of case studies and decide. You'll have to talk to us, talk to people we've worked with, and look at the work we can show, which is real but partial.

We don't have a team in the way you're used to.HXTN is small in its core. For each project we bring in the specialists the brief actually needs. Fabricators, motion designers, hardware engineers, sound designers, a fixed set of developers we work with. We lead the concept, the creative direction, the client relationship, and the development. Everything else is picked per project.

This is the opposite of how most fixed teams sell themselves. The usual pitch is a stable team of generalists who can do everything, with a pool of freelancers. At least we want to be honest about it. Outside our core team, a project might involve fabrication, real-time graphics, sensors, acoustic engineering, and brand storytelling. A generalist team will be great at two of those and okay at the rest. We'd rather bring in the person who is best in class at the thing your project actually needs.

A permanent team has to be paid whether or not your project needs all of it, the project managers, the creative directors, the office, the overhead. We charge for the people doing the actual work. We're a bit slower at the start, because we're choosing the team while we're shaping the brief. After that we move faster than four teams passing the work back and forth between them.

You can hire us for the whole thing or just a part. You have an idea but don't know how to land it? We can take it from idea to installation. You already have an agency and need a production partner who can actually build it? We can sit behind them, out of sight. You want us as the visible studio of record? That works too.

We don't make experiences that exist just to be fun for a minute.What we see a lot is the queue, the photo moment, the activation that makes a cheerful clip and a handout. There's craft in that, but the brief is usually thin. Hand out the product, get the share, move on. That's not us. An activation, in any shape or form, has to carry a story. If the project is 'give away samples and put a logo on a wall,' we're the wrong studio.

What we make is closer to architecture than to entertainment. Scale that changes how a person stands in a room. The long pause, the cool palette, the moment that isn't trying to be shared. We call it Kubrick meets Spielberg. Not one or the other. Both at once. The seriousness and art of Kubrick, the warmth and the cleverness of Spielberg.

We grew up with Spielberg, and still watch his movies. The wooden plank with dirt on it that Spielberg used as a kid to make bomb effects, that's the same instinct as how we build. We take old or new technology and bend it to the idea. A machine built in the seventies to do one specific thing, we can retrofit to do something completely different that the project actually needs. You don't need the whole machine. Same with the team. You don't need the whole operation. You need the right clever thing, and the right clever people, who know exactly what they're doing.

Yes. That was a shitload of information, so basically: we can't show you most of our work. We don't have a permanent team, which is how we keep the price honest and the talent right for the job. We don't make things that are just fun for a minute. We make things meant to last, which usually turn out to be fun and magical too.