Work Services Demos Studio Contact hello@theweb.studio Text (347) 313-8867
Experiences built around your brand.
Design.Engineering.Fabrication.
Work

Selected works.

All work →
What we make

Four strands, one thread.

All services →

Every project runs the same thread: it starts with strategy and ends in reality.

S

Strategy

Where every project starts.

Every business comes to us with something different: a launch, a slow season, an idea, a problem. We take the time to understand what you sell, who it's for, and what's already working, then shape the plan together. Sometimes that needs one strand below. Sometimes all four.

P

Production

Everything that gets made.

Visual work: photography, video and motion in your brand's own language. Physical work: 3D-printed signage, displays and merch with NFC tags (a chip a customer taps with their phone) set inside them.

D

Discovery

How people find you.

Everything that makes you findable: your website, your search results, your listings, and the pieces that travel on their own, like branded stickers people drop into their stories and texts. Whether someone is searching for you or hasn't heard of you yet, you show up.

R

Reality

Where they end up.

Spatial experiences: WebAR (a camera experience opened from a link, no app to download), interactive installations, and full 3D capture of a room or an object. All of it runs on the phone your customer already carries.

Design, engineering, and fabrication under one roof. No subcontractors, no handoffs.

50M+ views on our AR work 500M+ views on our stickers 10+ years doing this
About the studio →
Start a project
Tell us what
you’re working on.
Email hello@theweb.studio
Text or call (347) 313-8867
Studio Queens, NYC
Remote friendly
Inquiry form

Work
What we’ve made.

Each project below shows what we built, what it was for, and what it did once it was out in the world.

Services
What we do, and what it costs.

Three domains, with a price on every piece of work inside them. Read the tiers, pick the row that fits, and book a call. If nothing fits, the call is still free.

Start here

What are you trying to fix?

“People walk past and never come in.”
A window piece, a sign, or a camera experience that gives someone a reason to stop, look, and take a photo of it.
Physical, Spatial →
“My website is years out of date.”
We improve the site you already run instead of rebuilding it. Your platform, your domain and your search rankings stay where they are.
Digital Enhancement →
“I never have anything to post.”
A season of photography, video and campaign images from one round of direction, in one visual language.
Visual →
“People come once and forget us.”
Something they keep or share that points back to you: a tap-to-open object on their keys, or a sticker set they put on their own posts.
Physical, Visual →
“I am running this out of a spreadsheet.”
Dashboards and automations built around the way you already work, without hiring an engineering team to maintain them.
Custom software →
“We need something better to give clients.”
Your logo, or the building itself, 3D printed with an NFC chip set inside. It sits on a desk rather than in a drawer, and a tap opens your site, a project page, or wherever you point it. Ordered in runs for closings, completions and year-end.
Physical →
“The building is being renovated and there is no record of it.”
We scan it first. A full 3D record of the structure as it stands, dated and measurable, that you can walk through in a browser years later. Useful before a renovation, during a build, and at a facade inspection.
Spatial →
“We need the thing people line up for at the event.”
A photo booth on the guests' own phones. Tap a sign, take the photo, leave with a card or a strip that carries your name and your partners, shared from the phone before they reach the bar.
Visual, Digital →
“We need something for the district that is not another street fair.”
A route people actually walk. We have run a weekend-long hunt across six businesses, with pieces to find, phones to tap and a reason to enter every door on the list. Built for a BID, a chamber or a council office.
All three →
What we make

Three domains, one studio.

In practice

What people actually use it for.

Animated sticker sets
Your customers find your stickers inside Instagram, TikTok and iMessage and put them on their own posts and videos. Your name rides along with their content, to their followers, without a media buy.
Visual →
3D product scanning
We digitize your products so a customer can spin them in 3D on your own site. They get a proper look before buying instead of guessing from two photos.
Spatial →
Smart objects
Any printed piece with a chip inside, doing whatever you point it at. A counter piece that opens your menu. A logo keychain that opens a page you own. Signage, packaging, merch, display models. Where it points changes without reprinting a thing.
Physical →
Objects with something behind them
The tap is the door, and we build what is on the other side. A piece that starts an AR game in your shop. One that logs stock into a system built for how you count it. One that checks a guest in. The object stays simple; the work sits behind it.
Physical, Spatial →
Generated campaign content
A season of product shots, ads and short video from one round of direction. Enough to post consistently without booking a shoot every month.
Visual →
Camera experiences in your space
Point a phone at your window, your packaging or a wall and something appears on screen. It opens from a link or a tap, with no app to download, and it is the part people record.
Spatial →

Every project opens with a strategy session: what is worth building, in what order, and what to leave alone. Pricing for each domain is below.

Pricing

Standard, Brand, Custom.

The work is the same at every tier. Standard is a fixed price with a fast turnaround, for posting on your own channels. Brand covers a larger scope, adds revision rounds, and includes the rights to run it as paid advertising. Custom gets quoted per project. You see the number before anything starts, and it does not move after. If nothing on this page fits what you have in mind, the first call is still free.

Studio rates. The prices below are our rates for brands, venues and events. Running a local or independent business? Ask for a custom quote: we scope the same work to fit your size and budget.

05 / Bespoke

Custom.

Scoped per project

For the idea that doesn’t fit a package.

A scavenger hunt that runs across a whole neighborhood. An internal tool your staff will actually open. A 3D archive of a family business before it changes hands. An install in a storefront window that people stop for. A merch drop where no two pieces match. Something nobody has asked us for yet.

Sketch it on a napkin. We will scope it, prototype it, and ship it, and you will know the number before we start.

Every project: a first call, a written scope, payments split across milestones, and full ownership when we hand it over.

Signing bonus

Every signed project comes with a 3D-printed version of your logo with an NFC tag inside it. A customer taps it with their phone and lands wherever you point it: your site, your booking page, your menu. It ships in week one, so you have something on the counter before the rest is finished.

Innovation

When it all runs together.

Case study

The Great Ganja Hunt

Trends LIC · 4/20 weekend

Strategy, 3D printing and AR in one weekend, across six Long Island City shops.

One strategy session became a neighbourhood-wide hunt for Trends, the first Black-owned dispensary in LIC. Nine NFC-embedded letter pieces designed and printed in-house, hidden across six local businesses. Teams solved clues, tapped each piece with their phone, and every stop sent new customers through a neighbour’s door on the busiest weekend of the year. It ran a second year, with seven partners.

This is what the three domains look like pointed at one idea: something to hold, something to watch, something to walk into.

Read the case study →

Process

How a project runs.

Day 1
Discover

One call, thirty to forty five minutes. We look at your site, your social, and what you are actually trying to fix. No form to fill out first. You talk, we take notes.

↳ FREE · 30 MIN
Days 2–3
Plan

You get one page: what we are building, what you need to send us, how long it takes, and what it costs. Itemized, with nothing left open to interpretation.

↳ 50% DEPOSIT TO START
Weeks 1–4
Ship

We build on top of what you already have. One check-in partway through and one round of changes are already included. Your NFC logo arrives in week one.

↳ 1 – 4 WEEKS
Launch day
Handoff

Live links, the source files, and a short walkthrough so your team can run it. You keep your platform, your search rankings, and your domain. Nothing is locked to us. The remaining half is due at launch.

↳ HANDOFF + 50% BALANCE
FAQ

Common questions, plain answers.

Demos
Try it on your own phone.

Seven things we built, running live. Open any of them in your phone browser. Nothing to download, no sign-up, no app store.

Working demos

Go on, try one.

Camera + generative AI

Hair Studio

Take a photo of yourself and change the cut or the colour. Your face, your lighting, your angle, with only the hair redrawn.

What it shows: a try-before-you-buy tool a salon or barber can put on their own site.

Open it → Photo booth

Rookie Card Booth

Step up, take a selfie, and land on a 1987-style baseball card with your name and number on it.

What it shows: the branded photo moment people line up for at an event, and post afterwards.

Open it → Photo strip

Match Booth

Tap once. Three shots on a countdown with pose cues, dropped into a matchbox frame with the partners at the base. Nothing leaves your phone.

What it shows: the classic booth strip, run on a guest's own phone with no attendant and no server.

Open it → Photo booth, re-skinnable

Card Booth

The Rookie Card flow with the art, the copy and the scene as settings. Shown here as a tennis card for a night session in Flushing Meadows.

What it shows: the same booth dressed for a new event in an afternoon, with a link that carries the whole skin.

Open it → Augmented reality

World AR

A couch lands on the floor in front of you and stays there. Walk around it, crouch, back off: it holds its place. Drag to move it, pinch to scale, twist to rotate.

What it shows: a product, a sculpture or a sign a customer can place in their own space before buying. Runs on our own tracking, with nothing to print and nothing to scan.

Open it → Our production tools

Gen Labs

The suite we use in-house to make client content: image and video generation, product swaps, social kits, all in one place.

What it shows: how the content on your feed actually gets made. Opens straight into the lab. Password is Generation.

Open it → Live object detection

Detect

Point the camera at something and it gets named. Watch, thumbs up, drink, or anything at all.

What it shows: a scavenger hunt that knows when someone found the right thing, or a display that reacts to what a customer picks up.

Open it →

Every one of these runs in a normal phone browser. That is the point: a customer taps a link, a sign, or an NFC chip and it opens, with nothing standing in the way.

Studio
All of it made here.

Signs and objects, photography and video, and WebAR camera experiences. Every part of it made under one roof, so nothing gets handed off and nothing gets lost.

Whereabouts
Queens, NYC
Remote and on-site
across the five boroughs.
Reach us
hello@theweb.studio
Weekdays, same-day reply.

We work with the people who own the places and the people who build them. Restaurants, studios, salons, gyms, dispensaries and shops. General contractors, developers and property owners. Law, accounting and professional firms. Business improvement districts and council offices. Signage, photography, video, websites, 3D scanning, custom tools. Priced so it is worth doing more than once.

We treat tomorrow's tech like a public good. A conversation, a clear quote, and a thing that ships. The work is held to the same standard on every project that comes through.

AR
50M+
WebAR & filter views
MOTION
500M+
GIPHY sticker views
3D PRINT
500+
NFC objects shipped
SHIPPING
10+ yrs
In creative tech

How we work.

Operating Principles
01 / Lean studio + network

One practice, deep bench.

A tight core with a network of trusted collaborators (motion, fabrication, photography, code, engineering) brought in per project. Direct line to the people doing the work.

02 / Transparent quotes

No mystery line items.

Quotes are itemized in plain language. Tip jar, not a retainer. We tell you when something is overkill for your need.

03 / Local first

Built where we live.

Queens-rooted. Designed, printed, and shot in-house. We'd rather be useful to a block in our neighborhood than impressive in a slide deck.

Method

S.P.D.R.

Strategic Prototyping, Design, Research.

Every engagement runs on it. Build the first version fast so it has something to react to. Design around what the prototype teaches us, not what the brief guessed. Treat the research as the work, not the pre-brief formality. It’s how we deliver global-studio craft on small-studio budgets and timelines.

Open work, public goods.

Things we give away

Public utilities, open code, and detailed case studies, published in full. The practice gets better when more people can build on top of it, so we put the work where anyone can read it.

Contact
Tell us what you’re after.

One call, thirty minutes, no form to fill out first. We will tell you what it takes and what it costs, or tell you we are not the right fit.

Email hello@theweb.studio
Text or call (347) 313-8867
Text us a date and a venue to set up the call.
Studio Queens, NYC
Remote friendly
Coverage Five boroughs.
Remote anywhere.
Elsewhere @the_web.studio / ig
theweb.studio
Inquiry form

← All journal
Journal / GIPHY · MotionMarch 2026

What 500M+ sticker views taught us about distribution that doesn't cost money.

GIPHY stickers are not branding. They're free distribution into every messaging app at once. What makes a pack get used, and what makes one sit unopened.

The 500-millisecond rule

Inside a sticker picker, a user scrolls past your work in roughly half a second. If the sticker can't communicate its intent in 500ms, it doesn't get sent. If it doesn't get sent, it doesn't get seen.

Every animation we ship for GIPHY is auditioned against that window. Clear silhouette. Loop that lands by frame 12. One readable gesture. If a piece needs context to make sense, it's not ready.

Why the medium matters more than the brief

GIPHY stickers propagate to six-plus platforms from one upload: Instagram Stories, Snapchat, TikTok, iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and a handful of smaller services that tap GIPHY's API. Every send is a placement the brand didn't pay for.

That makes stickers a distribution medium more than a creative one. The art has to be good (that's the price of admission), but the win condition is usage, not impression. A sticker that gets sent 50,000 times is worth more than a poster seen 500,000 times.

What makes a pack get used

From shipping campaigns for GIPHY itself, the Myrtle Ave Brooklyn BID, the Flatiron NoMad BID, and dozens of personal brands, the patterns are consistent:

  • Reaction-shaped, not statement-shaped. "Yes." "No." "Same." "Bye." beats a long brand slogan, every time.
  • Transparent backgrounds. Anything with a square white box around it reads as ad. Stickers are conversational.
  • One character, not a brand mark. Mr. Pink for Flatiron NoMad. The mascot for Myrtle Ave. Mascots get sent; logos don't.
  • Keyword tags that match how people actually search. "Pink" gets traffic. "Flatiron NoMad BID Q1 winter campaign" does not.

Why this scales below the cost line

A 10-sticker pack starts at $2,000, including the GIPHY brand channel; original character animation or a larger set costs more. Once shipped, it costs nothing to distribute. There is no media buy, no boosted spend, no platform fee to keep the work alive.

Stickers we shipped two years ago still surface in pickers today. The Flatiron NoMad pack has crossed 50K+ views with zero paid distribution. The earlier Myrtle Ave Brooklyn pack is at 12.3M+. Each one continues to compound.

The honest tradeoff

Stickers are not a substitute for a campaign. They're a layer on top of one. The brands that win with stickers already have a story to tell. The pack just gets that story into messaging conversations the brand will never see, wouldn't be invited to, and couldn't buy into.

That's the whole pitch. Animation that earns its half-second, distributed into every group chat in America, paid for once.

Related work
Project · Motion · GIPHY Motion & GIPHY Open → Case study Flatiron NoMad / Glows Pink. Read →

Working on something in this space?

Discovery call is free, 30 minutes, no script. We’ll tell you whether it’s a fit and what it would take to ship.

Start a thread →