same hustle. bigger table.
gdj started as one person and one laptop. it’s a team of five now, based in new york and working with clients wherever they are. this is who we are and how we work — pinned up the way we’d show you in the room.
the people behind it.
no account managers, no subcontractors. these are the people who’ll be on your project.
runs the studio and still does the work — strategy, design direction, and most of the client calls.
edits every photo and video that leaves the studio, and designs the graphics that go around them.
runs the accounts day to day — the calendar, the captions, and the comments and dms most agencies skip.
keeps projects moving: scoping, scheduling, and making sure what we promised is what actually ships.
want to work here? we hire rarely, but we always read. gdjcreative@gmail.com
how we work.
not values on a wall — the rules that decide what we take on and how we run it.
we take on a handful of clients
a small roster is the whole model. it means your project gets thought about between meetings, and it means we say no to work we can't do properly.
we build everything ourselves
no white-label subcontractors, no offshore handoff, no templates dressed up as custom. the people you meet are the people doing the work.
we don't disappear after launch
the week a site goes live is the week most agencies stop answering. we're around for thirty days of tweaks as standard, and we pick up the phone after that.
we tell you when you don't need us
if a cheaper tool solves your problem, or the work you're asking for won't move anything, we'll say so. one honest no is worth more than a year of invoices.
we write like you talk
every word we put out gets read back against how you actually speak. if it sounds like a marketing agency wrote it, it doesn't ship.
we show our numbers
reach, leads, rankings, load times — reported plainly, including the months where something didn't work. you shouldn't need us to interpret your own results.
the record.
we’re young as a studio and we don’t pretend otherwise. here’s the whole story.
one laptop, one client
freelance work for local shops that needed to look the part — a website here, a logo there, mostly nights and weekends.
we rebranded
a warmer identity and a name to grow into. gdj., with the honey period, and a promise we could actually put on the wall: same hustle, bigger table.
a team of five
designers, editors, writers, and marketers working out of new york — on location across nyc and long island, and working with clients wherever they are. the roster is still deliberately short.
for the record
colophon — what this site is made of
before you ask.
who will i actually be working with?
the person who runs your project is the person you meet on the first call, and they stay on it start to finish. there's no account manager relaying messages to a team you never see.
how many clients do you take at once?
a handful. we'd rather turn work away than stack projects and hand you a slower, worse version of what we promised. if we're full, we'll tell you when we're not.
do you only work with businesses in new york?
most of our clients are in nyc and long island, and being local genuinely helps for photography and local seo. but the website and brand work happens fine anywhere — we've built for clients we've never stood next to.
what size business do you usually work with?
owner-operated businesses, roughly one to twenty people — trades, shops, studios, service businesses. big enough to need real marketing, small enough that the owner still answers the phone.
how do we start?
one call, no deck. you tell us what's not working, we tell you what we'd do about it and what it would cost. if it isn't a fit, we'll usually know inside twenty minutes and say so.
come sit at the table.
one call, no deck. tell us what isn't working and we'll tell you what we'd do about it.