design+code
We get asked this regularly. You are a studio, but you seem to have a lot of people involved. Are you an agency? Do you have employees? The answer is no on both counts, and it is worth explaining why.
Della Mattia is a one-principal studio. I direct every project, write every brief, and stay in the work from kick-off to launch. For execution, I work with a consistent set of designers, developers, and copywriters — specialists I have worked with repeatedly, whose work I know and trust, brought in on projects that match their skills.
This is not the same as sending work to random freelancers found on a platform. The network is small, known, and stable. What changes project to project is the composition, not the people.
The traditional agency model solves one problem — capacity — and creates several others. To sustain a team of ten, you need a pipeline that justifies ten salaries. That pressure shapes the kind of work you take and the way you price it. Junior hours get billed at rates that hide them, and the senior person you hired for their taste is increasingly managing rather than making.
I have worked inside that model. It is not the way I want to work, and it is not what clients actually want when they say they want senior attention.
On every project at Della Mattia, the person you brief is the person doing the strategic and creative work. When a specialist joins — a developer for a complex Shopify build, a copywriter for a bilingual launch — they are brought in deliberately for that project, not because they happen to be on the roster.
The result is that projects are staffed for what they need, not for what the studio needs to keep busy.
A network model scales up without the overhead that makes agencies slow. A brand identity and a Webflow build can involve two people. A full e-commerce launch with campaign content can involve five. Either way, the brief is the same size and the attention is the same.
It also means we can say no to projects that are not the right fit, without the revenue anxiety that comes with a fixed headcount. That is a better position to work from, and clients feel it.
We are not a one-person shop taking on more than one person can handle and quietly outsourcing the overflow. Every collaborator is integrated into the project and briefed properly. And we are not an agency with a small-studio pitch — there is no team of twenty behind the website.
If you want a large team and a layered account structure, we are probably not the right fit. If you want senior work, direct communication, and the right people on each project rather than the available ones, we might be.
Email bonjour@dellamattia.com if you want to talk about a project.