About
Make it make sense.
IONE is an independent design and technology studio in Ashikaga, Japan. We architect how a business is seen, understood, trusted, and experienced.
A studio that turns scattered ideas into clear, working systems.
Brands, websites, print, and apps, handled in-house, by one studio that holds the whole picture. Not a logo here and a website there from three different people who never spoke. One standard, applied across everything a customer sees.
From the floor to the system
IONE is built by Lance Derecho, a Filipino designer and technologist based in Japan. The studio comes from real work and real constraints, not theory, which is why the output has to function, not just look good.
The belief underneath all of it: the business is the experience. Every touchpoint tells the customer what to believe. When they line up, trust is automatic. When they don’t, no amount of marketing fixes it.
What we believe
Three rules we don’t break.
01
Coherence over decoration
Most businesses don't have a design problem, they have a coherence problem. The logo, the site, the menu, the signage, all saying slightly different things. We make them say one.
02
Simple is harder than complex
Anyone can add. Removing everything that isn't the point, until only what matters is left, is the hard part. That restraint is the work.
03
Tools don't think. People do.
We use AI and modern tooling as leverage, never as the taste. The judgment, the structure, the final call, those stay human.
Where this goes
From studio to creative ecosystem.
IONE starts as a studio. The direction is a creative ecosystem, products, tools, and a way of working that outlasts any single project. Built deliberately, in the open, one real client at a time.
Have something worth doing right?
Tell us what you’re building. We’ll tell you, honestly, whether IONE is the right studio for it.