We translate the science that shapes human health, with strategy, craft, and rigor, so the right people understand it, believe in it, and act on it.
Understanding for all is not a nice-to-have here; it is the point. Clarity is respect, and complex science made legible is how the work we do today will have global impact tomorrow.
The studio
The place where a breakthrough has to become an investment, an approval, a decision, a belief.
Founded in Seattle in 2001. We work today from Seattle, with a Boston and DC presence.
How we're built
Science-first
Board-certified medical illustrators and PhD-level scientists and writers sit on the same teams. Science is our first language.
Regulatory-aware
We work fluently across the full arc from discovery to commercialization, with medical, legal, and regulatory review built in and grounded in FDA AdPromo training.
Built to deliver
We take an idea from strategy through finished, produced work. You get a studio that ships, not a consultancy that hands you a plan and walks away.
The people
Scientists, designers, strategists and writers, in one studio. See who you would be working with.
How we work
However complex the science or the moment, the way we work stays consistent, so you always know how a piece of work will get made.
The scientific value proposition is the foundation everything else stands on, so we build it first. We start in learning sessions with your scientific team, take the science apart into its essential elements, and find the single claim that matters most. Then we rebuild it into a proposition a specialist and a generalist can both grasp, and pressure-test it against the audiences who will hear it, so your whole company can align behind one story.
A science brand is only as strong as the truth beneath it, so we begin in the science, not the mood board. We frame the narrative, then prototype visual and verbal metaphors with you, iterating until one is simple, scalable, and true. From there we build the positioning, identity, and system around it, so the brand holds up everywhere from a pitch deck to a trial site to a campaign.
We show how a therapy works and how a disease progresses, in static figures or in motion. A PhD science writer and a certified medical illustrator work as a pair, diving into the literature and your experts' input, deconstructing the mechanism to its essential beats, then rebuilding it as a story an audience can follow. We review with you at clear gates, so every frame is scientifically defensible before it is beautiful.
Before we narrow, we widen. We map the whole system a problem lives in, whether that is the link between human, animal, and environmental health or the full web of stakeholders around a decision, and look for the points where communication can actually move something. Then we design for that real context rather than a slice of it.
We make plausible futures tangible, where a platform, a therapy, or a field could realistically go, and use them to pressure-test the choices in front of you now. Working in facilitated sessions, we give a possible future a concrete form you can react to, which surfaces the assumptions and decisions worth making today. This is not prediction. It is a way to interrogate the present.
We design with the people the work is for, not only for them. We begin with research into their needs, then co-create, prototype, and test in iterative loops that bring your real audiences into the process. What we build earns trust because the people who will use it helped shape it.
Who you work with
Science Storytelling
Building the argument a mechanism makes, so a novel science is understood on its own terms.
Design
Systems strategy, not decoration. Our designers build the visual and structural logic that makes complex science understood and believed.
Communications
Making rigorous science legible to the exact audience that has to act, from regulators and payers to patients and the public.
Studio Operations
The backbone that keeps the work dependable, so range is predictable rather than heroic.
Together they act as one interdisciplinary team, not a relay between separate departments.
Where we go deep
Science Communication
Making the science legible to the audience that has to act on it.
Venture Design
The scientific value proposition, built to be invested in.
One Health
Human, animal, and environmental health treated as one system.
Thematics
The studio, on film
Who we work with
Biotech and pharma, diagnostics and device, global health foundations and research institutes, and the venture firms backing them.
A selection of the organizations we are working with now.
Logos show a relationship only; no outcome or endorsement is implied.
Our work has been recognized by AIGA, the Association of Medical Illustrators, the Telly Awards, Muse, Rx Club, and SIGGRAPH, and named a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award nominee, among others.
Six Fundamentals
Read them in full →Common questions
Cognition Studio is a life sciences creative strategy studio founded in Seattle in 2001. We translate complex science into strategy, storytelling, and design that move investors, regulators, patients, and the public to act.
We are strategy-led and interdisciplinary end to end. Science writers, medical illustrators and animators, designers, and brand strategists work as one, and the strategy comes before the brief.
Biotech and biopharma teams, health-tech and medical-device companies, diagnostics, global-health organizations, research consortia, foundations, and the funds that back them.
Our signature method for turning a scientific foundation into an investable, communicable value proposition.
Seattle, with a Boston and DC presence.
Let's talk
When science becomes something people understand, believe, and act on, it reaches the people who need it. If that is the kind of work you are trying to do, get in touch.
