Brand | Strategy | Leadership
For teams on a Mission
LUCERNE x BERLIN
When AI enables everyone to create, the decision OF what to create is MOST mission critical.
Studio Schafstall is the brand direction practice of Simon Schafstall — a decade in advertising, then five years inside Trade Republic and LIQID, building brands and creative teams through hypergrowth. Companies engage the practice for what resists automation: judgment & taste.
This is how we help ambitious companies to grow.
№ 1 — Interim Creative Leadership
1–3 days / week
3–12 months
By appointment
Your brand lead left. Or doesn't exist yet. The team ships without judgment, and a mis-hire costs you a year.
Embedded, one to three days a week. I build or bridge the creative team, set the standards, hold the quality gate, and manage the stakeholders until your own leadership stands.
I've held this seat three times: building in-house creative teams at Trade Republic and LIQID from zero, and bridging the incoming Brand Director at HERO Software.
№ 2 — Brand Direction Sprint
3-5 weeks
Starting at 10.000 CHF
Your brand was made for a smaller company — or an earlier time. Now a moment is coming it can't carry: a raise, a launch, a trade show, a new audience.
Three to five weeks, in the room with you and your team. We decide what the brand should stand for now and ship it: positioning, voice, identity, or the website that carries it all.
Productions run through AI-assisted Pipelines and handpicked human specialists.
№ 3 — Brand Direction Retainer
Monthly
Flexible Depth
Your brand is live and it never stops needing things — landing pages, campaign sets, site sections, decisions that shouldn't wait. No single item is a project. But it never lets up.
Monthly retainer. On-call access to direction and production — the judgment your brand needs to stay coherent, and the assets it needs to stay visible. Start with a month; extend if it works.
N°
WORK
FIELD
YEAR
N°1
Trade Republic
In-house Creative Team - Built & Led Through Hypergrowth
2022-24
N°2
LIQID
Head of Creative - Private Banking Standards
2024-23
N°3
Sovendus
Positioning, Identity & Web across 14 Markets
2025
N°4
Deep Tech Momentum
Brand, Campaign, Web
2025-26
N°5
Hero Software
Positioning, Brand System, Product Architecture
2026
† Foundations 2014—2021: Award-winning campaign work in advertising, incl. Jung von Matt before moving inside the companies themselves and founding my studio afterwards
For teams on a Mission
LUCERNE x BERLIN
Simon Schafstall
Creative Director
He is 37 and still loves Anime, yes you heard right, we can not believe it either. When he is not pushing brands, he is meditating, doing breathwork, swimming in the lake, or enjoying some food. Oh yes, the food. If you want to make him happy, just bring him to a fancy restaurant or cook something special. If he is not eating or working, you will find him working out in the gym or running near lake lucern. But maybe, just maybe, he stopped by a watch store and admired some of the swiss brands.