Old Masters — New Rebels
Most founders have to choose.
Strategy consultants who think brilliantly and hand you a deck. Design agencies who make it beautiful but start from whatever brief you give them. AI platforms that move fast and look like everyone else.
We don't make you choose.
The Observatory combines strategic communication with visual identity, integrated, intentional, and built around your specific ambition. We figure out what you're building, what it should say, and how it should look. All of it. Done properly.
Let's talk—
razor-sharp execution."
Executive Producer, Enriched Media Group
Twenty-five years of craft. The sharpest tools in the room. And zero interest in doing it the way everyone else does.
We've worked with Google, NASA, Fortnite, and hundreds of founders who needed to get it right when it mattered most. We use AI the way master craftspeople use new tools, to go further, faster, without losing the thing that makes the work worth doing.
Not a production line. Not a vendor. Creative partners that actually give a damn about your outcome.
Brand strategy
Positioning
Narrative architecture
Creative direction
Investor communications
Campaign strategy
Market insight
Brand design
Visual identity
Art direction
Motion
Film
Gen-AI design
Key visuals
Pitch decks
End-to-end production
Web
Multi-platform content
Experiential
Social
Generative AI film and motion.
“An unstoppable avalanche of creativity—and incredibly
exciting to work with.”
“World class design,
mind-bending visuals,
unstoppable commitment.”
“Rapid creative solutions
and breathtaking visuals”
“Nailed the brief.”
“Phenomenal.”
“Fantastic creative
work, and a pleasure
to work with.”
“F*cking fantastic.”
Ben Hickingbotham
Ben is where ideas begin and where they land, equally at home generating the concept that reframes everything as he is driving it through to execution.
He thinks fast, builds faster, and brings deep creative and strategic instinct to every project, asking what this needs to become, not just what it needs to look like.
Sarah Hickingbotham
She works across brand narrative, positioning and communications strategy, and has a particular talent for high-stakes moments: the pitch, the launch, the pivot.
Precise, perceptive and genuinely invested in getting it right.
Phil Clyde-Smith
He brings the craft of traditional filmmaking and the curiosity to push it somewhere new, including generative AI, without ever losing sight of the story.
If it needs to move people, Phil's your person.
