The human
One person, whole studio
Chronicle is Marlo Vane — designer, developer, and the only person reading this inbox. Here's the story, the receipts, and the rules the work lives by.
The short version
Designer, developer, occasional troublemaker
I've spent twelve years designing and building for the web — first inside product teams at startups you've probably used, now independently as Chronicle. The through line: work that has a point of view. Safe design is invisible design, and invisible is expensive.
We work end to end — strategy, identity, design, and the code that ships it. One tight team, no handoffs, no telephone game. You talk to the people making the thing, every time.
Marlo Vane
Founder & everything else, Chronicle
Where I've been
The long version
2022 — Now
Founder & everything else
Chronicle Studio
The one-person studio. Brand, web, and product work for founders who want one accountable human instead of a slide deck of departments.
2019 — 2022
Design lead
Northwind
Led a four-person team through a full replatform and rebrand. Learned that shipping beats presenting, and wrote the design system that outlived my tenure.
2017 — 2019
Senior product designer
Hexlab
Design systems and growth work for a developer-tools startup. Discovered that engineers are the best design critics you'll ever get for free.
2015 — 2017
Designer & front-end developer
Studio Anansi
Brand and web for cultural clients — galleries, festivals, one opera house. Where I learned that budgets are creative constraints wearing a disguise.
2014 — 2015
Junior designer
Freelance, badly
Underpriced everything, overdelivered everything, slept rarely. Kept the lessons, dropped the invoicing spreadsheet.
The house rules
How I work
01
Loud, not confusing
Boldness is a volume knob, not a blindfold. Every screamer earns its place by making the message clearer, never by decorating it.
02
Ship the weird version
The safe option gets you a site nobody remembers and nobody argues with. If a concept doesn't make someone on the call slightly nervous, it's beige.
03
Fast is a feature
Every page ships light and loads now. Speed is the one aesthetic choice every visitor notices, on every device, every single time.
04
One human, end to end
Strategy, design, and code from the same brain. No handoffs, no telephone game, no 'the dev team interpreted it differently'.
Got a project?
Let's make something loud
One email, no forms, no discovery-call maze. Tell me what you're building and I'll reply within two working days.
[email protected]Currently booking for Q3 2026