Straight answers. No runaround.

Submit a brief from the Request design help page. We respond within one working day with whether we can take the engagement on and what the next step is. Briefs that we cannot take on get a referral to the right place � usually one of the central agency partners Halcyon retains.

Three things, at minimum: what you�re trying to ship, who it�s for, and when it needs to be live. Bonus points for existing constraints � engineering capacity, brand requirements, deadlines that aren�t yours. The brief is a conversation starter, not a contract. We�ll refine it together in the first call.

Four to twelve weeks, typically. Some embedded engagements run longer � Devon has been with the Console team for two years. The shape of the engagement matters more than the duration: we�d rather do four weeks of focused work than twelve weeks of slow drift.

We don�t internally chargeback at the project level. The studio is funded from the COO�s budget. We do track the work, headcount, and outcomes per partner team and report on it quarterly � both to the COO and back to the partner team itself.

Anything Halcyon-branded, customer-facing, or product-shipping. Brand surfaces, marketing sites, product UI, motion, illustration, research, and design system work. We�re less suited to one-off operational graphics or slide deck production � there are better-fit partners for those inside the org.

Honestly: it depends on the quarter. We staff one major project per designer at a time, plus a smaller secondary if capacity permits. If your brief lands during a heavy month, we�ll tell you and offer a start date. We don�t queue work indefinitely.

Rarely. Once or twice a year for a specific deliverable that needs a perspective we don�t have in-house � usually a photographer, a typographer, or an illustrator on a single commission. We do not contract design teams. We�ve been that team and the model works for us.

For new product surfaces, yes. For legacy surfaces, we run a quarterly review with the owning team to plan adoption. We�re not trying to force migrations � we�re trying to give everyone the same set of primitives so the product feels coherent to customers.

Open a proposal in #atrium-library with a one-pager on what you need, why it�s a primitive (not a one-off), and where you�d use it. Jules and Mei triage proposals weekly. Most accepted proposals ship within two sprints.

Tokens in the Library Figma file (single source of truth) and mirrored in the @halcyon/tokens npm package. Components in @halcyon/ui. Motion specs in @halcyon/motion. The Storybook is internal; ping #atrium-library for the URL.

One open role currently � Senior Researcher. We post on the Halcyon careers site and accept referrals from inside the company. We hire one or two designers a year, on average.

Yes � three of the current studio came in via internal transfer. Reach out to Hana directly, or come through the normal posting process. Internal candidates go through the same portfolio review as external ones; the bar is the same.

There isn�t really a handoff moment � the designer is in your standup the whole time, the Figma file is shared from day one, and the implementation pairing happens during development, not after. If you�re getting a design thrown over the wall you have the wrong studio.

Figma for design and prototyping. Notion for the writing-before-drawing. Linear for engagement tracking. Loom for async review. Slack for everything else. The Atrium Library is consumed as an npm package by every product team.