1:1
The studio
Founded by three people who had spent long enough watching good work get worse at the handovers between agencies.
Neon Frame Creative is a UK creative media studio working from Leeds and London. It covers strategy, imagery, film, design, web and social in house, which means a client can brief one discipline or hand over the whole picture without the work being translated between agencies on the way.
How it started
Why we started it
Three of us had spent years watching good work get worse at the handovers. The strategist writes a position, the film company shoots something adjacent to it, the designer applies a look neither of them saw, and the web agency builds a page arguing a fourth thing. Nobody does bad work. The work just stops being one thing.
What we set out to build
A studio that covers all six disciplines in house, so there is nowhere for the argument to leak out. That was the whole founding idea and it is still the only thing that makes us different from a good agency with a good freelance list. Strategy first, always, because deciding what to say is cheaper than paying to say the wrong thing well. Then the assets get planned together rather than commissioned one at a time.
What we decided not to do
We do not sell retainers to people who need one thing. We do not present work we cannot explain the reasoning for. We do not put a client in front of an audience with imagery that promises something they cannot deliver, because the correction always costs more than the restraint would have. Those were founding decisions rather than policies we arrived at, and they have cost us work we were happy to lose.
Who founded it
Alastair Marshall
Co-Founder & Director
Sam Morrell
Co-Founder & Director
Reuben Swinfield
Co-Founder & Director
What we hold to
- Say it in one frame
- If the idea needs three slides of setup, it is not finished. Everything we make has to work in the first three seconds and reward the next thirty.
- Show the craft
- The work should look like somebody made a decision. Lighting, type, edit, grade: the parts a client cannot itemise are the parts that make the difference between adequate and convincing.
- Bright, not loud
- Energy without shouting. Confident enough to leave things out, which is harder and reads better than filling the space.
- Made once, used everywhere
- Assets are planned against every place they have to live before anything is shot. Nothing gets made twice because nobody asked what it was for.
The facts
- Registered name
- Neon Frame Creative Ltd
- Company number
- 17401405
- Trading since
- 2026
- Studios
- Leeds · registeredLondon
Where we have gone deeper into a market, we have written up how the argument changes there: property developers, education, legal services and financial services.
The studio: straight answers
Asked and answered
- Where is Neon Frame Creative based?
- Leeds and London, working UK-wide. The Leeds studio is the registered office; shoot days, site visits and meetings happen wherever the client is. Strategy, design, CGI and web work are done in the studio and are not tied to either location.
- Do you work with clients in one discipline, or only on the full package?
- Either. Plenty of work is a single film, one identity or one site. The advantage of six disciplines under one roof is that the single piece is made by people who know what happens to it next, not that you have to buy all six.
- What sectors do you work in?
- The studio is sector-neutral by design, and the craft transfers. Where we have gone deeper, into property development, education, legal services and financial services, we have written up how the argument changes in that market on our In Frame pages.
- Who owns the work you produce?
- You do, on the terms agreed before the shoot. We set out ownership and licensing in writing at the quote stage rather than after delivery, which is the point at which it becomes a negotiation instead of an agreement.
Bring us something worth framing
Tell us what you are launching, who has to believe it and when it has to be live. We will come back with what we would make and what it costs.