Mis­sion state­ments usu­al­ly start with a lot of beliefs.

Ryan is a sim­ple York­shire lad that nev­er set out to be a design­er or a busi­ness own­er, but even­tu­al­ly realised it was the thing he loved the most in the world. He worked for The Man for the best part of a decade head­ing up large teams in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try. One day he woke up, felt a weird pain, and realised that a part of his soul was miss­ing. He swift­ly packed up his things and called it a day. Through years of grit, deter­mi­na­tion — and as he’ll freely admit — sheer luck, he taught him­self graph­ic design, the art of brand­ing, then front- and back­end devel­op­ment, and most impor­tant­ly, fell in love with peo­ple, their moti­va­tions, and sto­ry­telling. Umlaut was born out of a need to do things dif­fer­ent­ly, and almost a decade lat­er, he’s well regard­ed for his no non­sense, hon­est approach to his craft.

Amelia her­alds from the States, mov­ing to Britain to be with her hus­band. She joined Umlaut at the begin­ning of 2021 — in the mid­dle of that pret­ty insignif­i­cant, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, glob­al pan­dem­ic — and in the time since, has been dili­gent­ly pro­fes­sion­al­is­ing the team, and build­ing sol­id rela­tion­ships with clients.

Elliot is the newest mem­ber of the team, and comes with more strings to his bow than Robin Hood. With tal­ents in print, dig­i­tal, social, and adver­tis­ing, Elliot is an incred­i­ble all-rounder who con­stant­ly amazes and delights in every­thing that he does. With expe­ri­ence work­ing for some of the biggest brands in the world, both at oth­er agen­cies and in-house, Elliot can work at any lev­el and hit the nail on the head every, sin­gle time. It makes you sick, does­n’t it.

David is one of those real­ly annoy­ing peo­ple that is seem­ing­ly good at every­thing. It’s often said that design­ers and devel­op­ers are like chalk and cheese, that their skills are so impos­si­bly dif­fer­ent that one per­son could nev­er do both. Apart from a point­less attempt at putting peo­ple in box­es, it’s also untrue. David has a deep appre­ci­a­tion for design, a keen under­stand­ing of user expe­ri­ence, and an abil­i­ty to craft effi­cient and beau­ti­ful web­sites, apps, and dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences. Annoy­ing­ly tal­ent­ed he may be, but my god are we glad to have him.

Rebec­ca is the sec­ond York­shire per­son on the team, orig­i­nal­ly from Sheffield, and just glad more than any­thing to have left all those hills behind. With a keen eye for cre­ativ­i­ty, a smile that lights up rooms, and ideas that cap­ture the heart, soul, and sto­ry of any pro­duc­tion, she brings anoth­er lev­el of awe­some to the table.

Mila joined us straight from uni­ver­si­ty, with a whole host of fresh ideas to add to the team. Her pas­sions lie in film and motion design, and has quick­ly become a much request­ed part of the team as ani­ma­tion becomes ever more required in brand­ing and marketing.