A creative practice, not a pipeline.
We're a creative studio in Portland, founded in 2013, with an unusually wide range of craft under one roof. We build websites, video, and digital experiences for organizations trying to make the world a better place — and we bring clarity to everything we touch along the way.
~ Numiss Building · N Mississippi Ave
We chose range, on purpose. We chose depth, on purpose.
Brian Gotts founded Serenity in 2013, coming out of a video production background. Video was the original craft, and for a few years that's most of what the studio made. Then the work started asking for more — a website to live alongside a film, an identity system the film needed to honor, a digital install that turned out to be the right place for the story to land.
The studio grew, slowly, around projects that didn't fit any one discipline. Every time we reached a point where we could have scaled — agency-style, with account managers and a sales team and the overhead that pays for them — we declined. Not because growth is bad. Because growth, the conventional way, would have ended the practice we'd been building.
What we're after isn't agency scale. It's range. Unusually wide craft, applied by the same people long enough to actually know the brand, the constraints, the people in the room.
We exist to create clarity.
We exist to connect the dots.
We exist to help our clients better communicate and connect with their audiences.
To align their brand with their identity and values.
To bring cohesion and consistency to their brand.
To evoke an emotion within your audience.
To communicate with text, color, imagery and sound in unison.
We exist to move the needle for our clients, to accomplish their goals.
We exist to design a better system, to optimize flow of message and design.
We exist to increase traffic and convert audiences to action.
We do all of these things not because they are different, but because they all matter and they are all connected.
That's why we're Serenity.
The operating model, in three paragraphs.
When you hire Serenity, you're hiring the people who'll do the work. Email us and you're reaching the people in the kickoff meeting, the people in the wireframe review, the people cutting your film — not a layer in front of them. The same hands stay on the work from start to finish.
We prefer multi-year relationships to single deliverables. Our best clients have been with us for half a decade or more — through brand work, websites, films, installations, the ongoing rhythm of a year of communications. The work compounds. Year three is better than year one because we know the institution; year five is better than year three because we've seen the institution change.
We don't sell brand clarity as a standalone — but the work we do almost always surfaces brand questions, and we do that work inside the engagement when it matters. Sometimes it's the most valuable thing we ship.
Experienced hands — and a trusted network around them.
The people on your project are experienced practitioners — direction, design, motion, strategy — with decades of combined craft across mission-driven work. You're not handed off to a junior team after the pitch; the people you meet are the people doing the work.
Portland, Oregon. And the sectors we say yes to.
Portland, Oregon, since 2013. The studio is at 909 N Beech St #209B, in North Portland. We work with clients across the United States, but we're here, and many of our strongest relationships are with Pacific Northwest organizations whose work we know firsthand.
Our work concentrates in mission-driven sectors:
- Private and public foundations
- Healthcare and academic medicine
- Higher education
- Civic and community organizations
- Purpose-aligned companies
We're particular about this. Not because we'd never work outside it, but because the studio's strongest work happens when the client's mission is something we can stand behind. Our practice is built around organizations trying to make the world a better place — that's not a positioning line, it's an actual filter for what we say yes to.
“They think holistically. At multiple junctures, they have raised their hand to help advise and counsel us on design decisions with other partners, never in the spirit of stealing the business, but instead trying to come up with a solution that fits our full story and brand.”~ Colby Reade· Vice President, External Affairs & Strategy · M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust
Have something in mind?
We'd love to hear about it.
When you email us, you're emailing the people who'll do the work — not a business development team.
hello@serenitystudios.com