upwield
Work Services How it works The maker
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Design + AI systems studio · Philadelphia

Punch above
your size

Upwield makes small businesses look sharp and run lean. One person handles the design and the automation, so a 3-person shop shows up and runs like a 30-person one.

Start with an audit → See the work →

A one-person studio. The person you talk to is the person doing the work.

Two halves of one studio

Two things, one studio: make your business look more professional, and cut the busywork behind it.

Look sharp

Show up like a bigger, more credible organization.

Deck Production
Investor, board, and advocacy decks that look like a design studio made them. Priced per slide.
Per-Event Media
A next-day highlight video and a staff/performer notes PDF for every show, built on a template.
Brand Kits soon
Logo, identity, and reusable templates so everything you send looks like one company.
Run lean

Get the repetitive work off your plate and run like a bigger team without hiring one.

Automation Audit
A one-week diagnostic that finds the manual busywork and hands you a ranked plan to kill it. Remote, from five written answers. It covers software and repeated tasks only, with no visit.
from $2,500
Workflow Bots
Slack and Discord bots that handle the repetitive work: FAQ, onboarding, notifications, ops.
Self-Host Migration
Move off stacked monthly subscriptions onto tools you own. Your savings pay for the switch.
See all services →
How it works · what it costs

Start small. The work earns the next thing.

No long contract to begin. Start with one small, concrete project. The work then shows what's worth building next. Three rungs up the ladder:

1

Start small

A $2,500 audit, or a single deck priced per slide. Low risk, nothing to commit to, and the audit lands in one week.

2

Get something concrete

A ranked plan with hours and dollars saved, or a deck you can present Monday. Yours to keep either way.

3

Build what it surfaces

The bot, the migration, the brand kit or the deck system gets a fixed-scope quote, from $5,000, before any work starts. You only fund what the first step proved worth it.

4

Stay lean

An optional monthly partnership keeps the systems running and the work sharp. Custom-scoped, only a couple of slots at a time.

Turnaround Audit in a week · decks in days · replies within one business day.
Pricing Custom per client. You get a fixed scope and price before any work, so the invoice holds no surprises.
Availability A one-person studio, so only a couple of projects run at once.
What the work looks like

Three problems, and what got built.

Real work for paying clients. It's anonymized, because what's built in the room stays in the room. Three recent ones:

Look sharp · Decks
Briefing decks that hold a room of aides
Problem: small teams walking into big rooms with slides that shrink them. Built: a reusable deck system with one focal point per slide, sourced figures and no template look, re-skinned per audience.
Dozensinvestor, board, civic & advocacy decks shipped
Run lean · Automation
A 300,000-message inbox, made findable
Problem: a mailbox so deep nothing could be found. Built: a sorting and auto-filing system that cleared the backlog and keeps it clean. Contracted, delivered and invoiced.
300kmessages organized for a paying client
Look sharp · Per-event media
Next-day recap media for every show
Problem: a Philadelphia music venue that needed sharp recaps with no media team. Built: a templated pipeline that turns out a highlight video plus a staff/performer notes PDF, same brand every time.
~2 hrsmarginal time per event; half runs on Upwield's own tooling
A few recent decks
Strategy
Keeping public dollars in the local economy
Procurement strategy
Briefing
The local case for food security
1 in 6face food insecurity
Food-policy briefing
Advocacy
“
Make the case the room can’t ignore.
Advocacy campaign

Full, name-stripped samples on request.

Proof

Three sites you can open right now.

Brand, copy and build, done end to end. All three are live.

I AM MAJOR KEY iammajorkey.com →
Exonerated Moving exoneratedmovers.com →
Futuristamantes futuristamantes.com →

See the full work & a real audit →

Built & shipped

Most studios show mockups. This one runs in production, so open it.

Design is half the studio. The other half is software that actually ships. A sample you can open right now:

AI tool
AppForge ↗
Describe an app in plain English; AI generates a working web app you can use on the spot.
Live demo

Plus a private local-AI suite and a stack more live builds.

Who you're working with
Ian, who runs Upwield

Upwield is Ian, a Philadelphia operator who spent 14 years running operations before going all-in on building studios. The combination is the whole point: most shops hand you a designer or an automation person. Ian is both, which is how a three-person organization ends up looking and running like a thirty-person one. You work with the maker from first email to final file. No account managers, no handoffs, no markup on someone else's work.

Ian reads every intake personally and replies within one business day.

Where are you losing time, or looking smaller than you are?

Tell Ian in five questions. He'll point to the fastest fix, whether that's a deck this week or an automation that saves you ten hours a month.

Start with an audit → Start a deck →