CLEVER°FRANKE: Where data meets design and emotion
June 9, 2025
Agency of the Year, CleverFranke, EDAwards25, europeandesignawards, Netherlands
Winners of Agency of the Year at the 2025 European Design Awards, the Dutch studio blends strategy, storytelling and technology to make complexity feel beautifully clear.
CLEVER°FRANKE is a studio shaped by systems — yet deeply human in its thinking. With offices in Utrecht and Chicago, they craft design experiences that translate complexity into clarity, and data into forms that resonate. Named Agency of the Year at the 2025 European Design Awards, the studio stands out for its ability to bring precision and emotion into balance. In this conversation, they speak about designing for trust, the invisible presence of AI, and the importance of staying curious in a shifting creative landscape.
“We use emotion as the intuitive element that drives engagement and interaction with our work.”
What does the title “Agency of the Year” at the European Design Awards mean to you?
The “Agency of the Year” title is a great honour for us. It is very exciting to get this kind of recognition, especially from our European peers, for our team’s dedication to pushing boundaries in design and innovation. It affirms that our approach of combining data, strategy, and design to deliver purposeful work is not only unique but also meaningful to the industry.
Among your EDA submissions, is there a project that you feel best captures the spirit and direction of CLEVER°FRANKE at this point in time?
Our recent work on the interactive Type 1 Diabetes Index for BreakthroughT1D (formerly known as JDRF) exemplifies our direction. It merges deep data insights and AI with user-centric design to create impact, which is exactly where we want to position ourselves as a company: creating transformative data & AI projects.
Your work often blends data, strategy, and storytelling. How do you balance logic and emotion in your design process?
We treat data as the foundational content of our designs. Data in and of itself might appear to be on the spectrum of logic, but analysing and contextualizing it provides meaning, purpose and direction, and thus emotion. We use emotion as the intuitive element that drives engagement and interaction with our work. By weaving storytelling into data visualization and being a good steward for content, we bridge the two and aim to appeal to audiences on both a rational and human level.
How do you define good design today — and has that definition changed for you over time?
What constitutes good design fluctuates as times change, but what stays constant is the importance of centring the needs of the audience and clear messaging. Good design today is adaptive, inclusive, and meaningful. As I reflect on it, I think “good design” has become more complex. It’s not just about visual and functional appeal, but now much more about systems thinking across the entire value chain. It takes a lot of analytical processing to create a design that is responsive to various needs. Next to this, it should also stand out in a world of noise and speak to people’s hearts and give them pause to reflect.
How do emerging technologies like AI influence the way you think or work as designers?
We can’t deny AI is a disruptive force in not just the design sector, but the entire world. It has pushed us to rethink our creative processes itself, and also explore new methods of designing with and for AI. The way we interact with AI and draw information, trust and credibility from it requires real design intent. AI might be very “visible” right now with people trying image generators and similar tools, but it’s going to be more invisible—less obtrusive—and weaved into everything in a very short time. As designers we have an obligation to make sure people can trust the way AI works, as well as an opportunity to shape the next big leap in AI-inclusive interface design. Data is the foundation of this for our positioning as a studio — I see it as a natural evolution and provides us to create products and services that are not just helpful in decision making or storytelling, but provide real intelligence and assistance.
What role does your team play in shaping the CLEVER°FRANKE identity?
Our team doesn’t just contribute to our identity; they define it. We’re a very international group of more than 15 nationalities, so every person here brings a distinct perspective, whether it is in their work or the culture. What unites us is our dedication and our shared mindset: open, curious, analytical, and with a passionate drive to find meaning in complexity.
“Our team doesn’t just contribute to our identity; they define it.”
How do you nurture growth — creatively and personally — within your studio?
This ties into the question above. We give everyone in our team space for experimentation, encourage exploration beyond people’s primary expertise, and make personal development paths an integral part of our studio and project flow. We believe growth happens when people feel ownership of their work and processes and have the freedom to fail forward. For instance, we have dedicated weeks within the year where we close the studio for client work, and our team works on personal and team goals.
What do you see as the biggest challenge for design studios today? And how are you navigating it?
One of the biggest challenges of today is staying relevant in an oversaturated, fast-moving landscape, especially within our niche of data design. The implementation of good and impactful design relies on a strong grasp of technology. (Digital) technology changes rapidly in terms of complexity and the expectations of the users and society, where keeping up with these demands and meeting them with the quality of the design remains crucial. We navigate this landscape by staying curious, ensuring cross-disciplinary collaboration, and focusing on long-term impact over short-term hype.
Looking ahead, what would you like to see change in the design industry over the next five years?
I would like to see an industry that has remained relevant and impactful: a design industry that takes itself seriously and is taken seriously by clients. For that we have to make sure we deliver value. AI will change everything and drive the commoditization of design and technology. Mundane tasks will no longer be necessary; designing an icon set will be done for us. That said, creativity is also an inherently human need and cannot be foregone. I would hope that design can make a meaningful contribution to the advancement of humanity, not just playing into apparent needs but actually shaping and driving change.
“Design should stand out in a world of noise, speak to people’s hearts and give them pause to reflect.”
Three words that describe CLEVER°FRANKE right now:
Explorative, passionate, futuristic
A designer (or studio) you admire:
I’m a big fan of the work by Silo. Just like us, they’ve carved out a niche for themselves and they deliver consistent high-quality design that often makes me jealous, in a positive way.
Last project that made everyone at the studio go “wow”:
The identity we created for the Design & AI Symposium was really exciting for our team. To use AI not only as a tool but as the material we made the very identity out of was something we hadn’t seen done before. It really sparked the imagination of our studio in how we can utilize AI and technologies for our design.