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a quiet studio in Movilița.
BrightLayoutGroup is a four-person web design studio, founded in 2021. We are based in Movilița, in the Ialomița county on the eastern Romanian plain, but the overwhelming majority of the engagements we run are for clients outside the county — Cluj, Bucharest, and various software teams across the EU.
The studio exists for the careful kind of work that does not fit inside a large agency.
Andreea, the founder, spent ten years inside a Cluj design agency and then a Bucharest fintech before starting BrightLayoutGroup. In both places, the work she enjoyed most was the slow, careful brand and site work for one client at a time. The work she enjoyed least was everything else: the portfolio churn, the account management overhead, the pressure to sell monthly retainers that clients did not really use. The studio was a deliberate decision to keep the first and drop the second.
Vlad and Diana joined within the first two years, each bringing a clear specialism — Vlad on brand identity, Diana on marketing sites and component systems. Bogdan came on at the end of 2023 to handle the non-design half of the studio: scheduling, scope, change requests, engagement letters. The four of us run every mission between us. We do not outsource and we do not subcontract.
We work on European business hours, in English or Romanian, with remote calls and two days a month of co-located work in Movilița or Bucharest. Most clients never meet us in person; a handful do, and we keep the door open for it. What the studio actually sells is a particular kind of calm: one mission at a time, senior designers signing their own work, a handover your developer can read in one sitting.
We do not use generative AI to produce client visual work. We use AI for research synthesis, call transcription, and the organisational scaffolding that every good studio uses to keep its attention on real work. The visual work itself is made by hand by one of the three senior designers, named in the engagement letter before any mission begins.
Four people, no middle.
There is no junior writing summaries and no senior signing off. The designer who answers your email is the one who puts their hands on the artboards.
Andreea Stoica
Founder · Principal designer
Twelve years in product and brand design, previously at a Bucharest fintech and a Cluj agency. Started BrightLayoutGroup in 2021 to do the careful kind of work that does not fit inside a large agency.
Vlad Munteanu
Senior brand designer
Ten years building brand systems for European software teams. Quietly competitive about typography. Leads the identity engagements.
Diana Pavel
Senior web designer
Eight years on the web side of design, came from a Helsinki dev-tools company. Leads the marketing-site builds and the component-library work.
Bogdan Cristea
Engagement lead
Keeps schedule, scope, and change requests in line. First person you talk to when you write in, last person you hear from at handover.
Six principles we keep on the wall.
We wrote these down for ourselves more than for you. They are here because they help us decide if we are the right fit.
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01
Brief before brushwork.
No artboard opens before we have read your audit, used your product, and agreed the one thing this engagement is trying to fix. Skipping this step is how good design dies in revisions.
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02
Two routes, not a mood board.
We bring two distinct, fully thought-out visual routes — not twenty pinned references. Choice paralysis is not a creative process; it is the absence of one.
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03
Design the dull half too.
Empty states, error states, the receipt, the unsubscribe page. The unglamorous half is where most digital products quietly fall apart, and we treat it as part of the work.
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04
Ship-ready or it didn’t ship.
Every design lands in a build-ready file with developer notes. Whether you build it with us or with someone else, the handover is clean.
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05
One designer, all the way.
No mid-engagement handoffs between juniors and seniors. The designer who scoped the work is the designer who hands it off.
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06
Say no honestly.
A brief that is not right, a route that is not honest, a deadline that hurts the work. Declining in writing within two days is cheaper for everyone than running a project that will not deliver.
Want to see if we are the right fit?
Send us a short brief. We will write back within two working days with a yes, a no, or a clear question.