The things we buy, the boxes they come in, and the experiences that sell them tell stories of design. A new industrial and product design firm, Maven Design, located in the heart of Cabbagetown, is delivering clever creations that can take your ideas to consumers. From packaging to product strategy, visual storytelling, and user experience, Maven Design’s founding trio have been dishing creativity to companies like Williams-Sonoma, Phillips, Coca-Cola, American Express, Samsung, and more.
Maven Design is ready to tackle your brand with their eye for innovation and human-centered solutions. Learn more about their work, why their holistic approach to design gives them the upper hand, and details about their upcoming open house.
The Pitch:
We are a design and envisioning firm. We work with small startups, large companies, and, sometimes, we even design our own products. We offer services including industrial design, product development, packaging design, strategic envisioning, and experience design. We inspire brands to create meaningful products and customer experiences.
Year/Date Founded: January 2016
Founders/Execs:
Delroy Dennisur – Co-founder & Lead Designer: Delroy brings over a decade of award-winning expertise designing innovative product and experience design solutions for leading brands. Prior to co-founding Maven, Delroy cultivated his expertise working for large agencies and with leading brands on projects ranging from healthcare to financial management to houseware products. His previous experiences include collaboration with Motorola, 3M, American Express, The Coca-Cola Company, Herman Miller, SC Johnson, and Heartland Robotics. Delroy has been recognized as a leader in his field, garnering multiple design awards including Red Dot, IDEA, iF, and Medical Design Excellence awards.
Justin Arsenault – Co-founder & Lead Designer: Justin is driven to translate insights into design tenets and to apply those tenets to products and services people genuinely love. His depth of experience plumbs multiple design disciplines including sporting goods, air care, home appliances, CPG, and juvenile products. He has collaborated with companies such as Procter & Gamble, The Coca-Cola Company, SC Johnson, McDonald’s, Mercury Marine, LG Electronics, Clearside Biomedical, and Apex Tool Group. Justin’s past experiences have enabled him to engage on projects recognized with Red Dot, IDEA, and iF design awards. He is also teaching at Georgia Tech.
Mihai Hogea – Partner & Lead Designer: Mihai is a quintessential (physical) product guy. His obsession with product construction, materials and maintaining design intent has resulted into a process that inherently balances human-centered design with product development realities. Prior to Maven, Mihai was a senior industrial designer with Williams-Sonoma in San Francisco, where he designed and developed 30+ products from research to production. He has also engaged on large programs in home-healthcare, lighting, packaging, kitchen wares and consumer industries for Philips, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Georgia Pacific and Kimberly-Clark. He has claimed multiple design and utility patents; many of which have been recognized with Red Dot, iF, Good Design and IDEA design awards. 
What problem are you solving?
It’s hard to find a creative partner as a hardware startup in the southeast. We aim to fix that problem in three ways.
- Connect with and become a resource for the startup community (Atlanta’s startups should not just be digital products; we can partner with hardware companies as well)
- Help galvanize and give a face to the product design community in the southeast and especially in Atlanta.
- Provide clients with flexible, world class design services, tailored for their unique needs.
How’d you get the idea for it?
Our team has strong traditional design backgrounds and has worked for various design firms, and design-centric corporates. We pull from our collective industry knowledge to create Maven as creative platform for the increasingly growing entrepreneurial community. We live somewhere in-between a traditional design consulting firm and product startup accelerator.
What is your revenue model?
We create revenue through our consulting work, strategic partnerships with small startups, and other business ventures.
What are some examples of your work?
Who are your competitors and how do you stand out?
We are 1-of-1. Throughout our industry experience we’ve noticed that the traditional design consulting model is transitioning out. Startups are driving the pace of business and Maven is a result of that shift. Our clients are demanding a more holistic approach to product development, at a startup pace, without all the “fluff”. Our design process is influenced by decades of innovation-led experience, but streamlined and tailored to fit each client’s unique need.
How does Atlanta weave into your story?
Maven is located in the cultural heart of Atlanta. Cabbagetown standup!
- We are unique in the Southeast.
- Atlanta has a unique creative culture that is hard to find in other cities. (yes, even San Francisco)
- We find inspiration and opportunities in everyday life everywhere we go in Atlanta.
- With Atlanta being the hub for numerous major corporations’ headquarters as well as fast growing startups, we are right where our clients need us to be.
Are you hiring?
We are hiring junior and senior level industrial designers as well as design interns. We are also currently looking for exceptional graphic designers.
Please share about your upcoming open house.
Our open studio is Thursday, September 22 at 6:30 PM at our office in Cabbagetown. See the details here.
It will be an industry networking event to learn about Maven, meet industry leaders, and discuss new trends in the industry. We have partnered with students at Illinois Institute of Technology School of Design, and will be giving demos of the Microsoft Hololens and Samsung Gear VR throughout the event. We are looking for the creative brains of our design community to think about “How will augmented and virtual reality impact the future of our industry”
