TOGETHER WITH YOU on blurring boundaries in design collaboration

The Brand Identity: TOGETHER WITH YOU is a creative practice built on a simple premise: people are creative by default. Artem Tarasov and Artem Taradash – both former Heads of Design at Arrival – operate from Tbilisi, Barcelona and Dubai, working on projects ranging from crypto to supercars. Their name reflects how they work: decision-makers join creative workshops, contributing stories, beliefs and ideas that become the foundation for design. Rather than delivering finished concepts for approval, they structure and translate collective thinking into coherent systems.

The duo reject rigid discipline labels, seeing brand and product as inseparable, and prefer long-term embedded relationships over isolated projects. They’ve deliberately stayed small, working with a network of collaborators rather than building a traditional agency structure. In our conversation, they discuss what their workshop sessions actually look like, why design often loses its disruptive potential in large organisations, and what they learned from Arrival’s rise and fall. TBI Hey Artem and Artem, how are things going? TWY Hey, all good! Starting a new season – our fourth already, wow.

We like to think of our practice as a TV series we’re both participating in and watching at the same time. Same characters, new context, unexpected plot twists. So yes, it feels like the beginning of a new season – more mature, but still curious. TBI How did you two meet, and what made you decide to work together? TWY As you may have noticed, we have almost identical names and surnames, so it still feels like it was meant for us to meet one day. That happened when we were both working at Arrival – a phenomenon between 2019 and 2022 rather than just an automotive start-up.

We instantly clicked, and when Arrival fell apart, there was no other answer than starting our own practice. We share not only names – our values match closely, yet we are very different in how we think and work. People are creative by default. People are creative by default. TBI Your name, TOGETHER WITH YOU, speaks directly to your collaborative philosophy. How does that principle play out in your day-to-day? TWY We’re constantly trying to blur boundaries. Before TWY, during our time at Arrival, we hosted workshops where we invited not only designers, but also product managers, engineers and C-level stakeholders.

Through these sessions, we realised that whenever someone genuinely cares about a product, a feature or an idea, they naturally want to contribute creatively. That led us to a simple but important belief: people are creative by default. Our role is not to dominate the process, but to structure, guide and translate this collective thinking into a coherent system, sometimes empower it. That’s how the name TOGETHER WITH YOU emerged – we’re never alone in the creative process.

We don’t ‘shine a light’ from above; we co-create alongside decision-makers and share responsibility for the final outcome. TBI You describe clients as co-creators and invite decision-makers into creative workshops. What does one of those sessions look like in practice? TWY It’s usually a mix of a workshop and an interview. We don’t treat a briefing as a document, but as a conversation.

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The article discusses a collaborative approach to brand strategy that is increasingly relevant in the industry, though co-creation is not entirely new, making it impactful and relevant for brand strategy professionals.