2015
We took ShareCover, a new insurance product for IAG, from design to launch in 6 weeks. It signed up 5,000 customers in its first 6 weeks.
Velvet Onion | The House of Better
We make things better by making better things.
We design and build apps, games and story worlds of our own, and we build the same way of making into your team.
5The agencyBrigid, for your team
4Knowing selfGospel of You
3Learn and buildFaster Zebra
2MovementDino Loco, F*it, Kith9
1Story worldsBooks, screen and music
GThe loungeYou are here
The distance from idea to app has shrunk from weeks to days.
October 2026
We took F*it from a written idea to a working concept in 2 days, and to a fully functioning app on a phone in less than a week, with 136 wireframes, a decision log and a website.
Our process made that possible. We kept the thinking and every creative call, and Brigid took on the production.
That speed is open to every team now. What's left is the question we've worked on since 2001: what's worth making, and who it's for. This building is our answer. Come up and see what we're making, and then let's make yours.
Teams we've made things better with since 2001
- Commonwealth Bank
- Westpac
- National Australia Bank
- American Express
- Telstra
- Atlassian
- Insurance Australia Group
- Woolworths
- Coles
- UNICEF
- Disney Interactive
- Fox Sports
- Customer Service NSW
In April 2025 we wrote down a building, with one way of working running through every floor. Eighteen months later, every floor has something real in it.
Soul and systems. Myth and method. Purpose and play.
Everything we create, whether it looks like a children's book, a startup toolkit, a daily deck or a game, is part of one living, breathing organism.
Level 1
Three worlds, each with books, a screen series in development and its own music.
All three series are in assessment with Screen Australia, and every album is out now on Spotify.
Momo & Yeti
Her brother left her a cure for sunlight. It only works if 8 monsters choose to give her a piece of themselves.
A grieving vampire hacker gathers a found family of monsters to finish her brother's cure, and every gift she needs is the very thing its owner was taught to hide. Six volumes, three albums, and a screen series in development.
Dino Loco
A world-eating cosmic horror tells her side of the story from a therapist's couch.
A satirical series that looks like a children's book and reads like a mirror held up to the adult world. Ten books, five approved and four illustrated by Ardee Delmo. On screen it's ten animated half-hours, and the theme song is Rewind the Apocalypse.
Kith9
Nine young guardians, each bonded to a threatened ecosystem, fighting a real environmental emergency.
Nine novels and nine screenplays take the guardians through nine real places, from the Amazon to Greenland. The ten-track album is called Beasts, Trees, Bees & Seas.
Level 2
Games and training that get people moving, at every age.
In TestFlight
Dino Loco game
Walk to meet wild dinosaurs.
Wild dinosaurs wander the real map around you, and you walk to meet them. Your steps feed your buddy, and every 12,000 steps opens the next chapter of Book 1, The Nine Realms.
Brigid took on
Building the playable app from the Figma file we designed for the whole game, end to end, which had sat dormant for two years.
People kept
Every character and every asset, created by hand. The art direction and the creativity are all ours.
Pilot open
F*it
Fuck it, get fit.
Strength training for people from 50 up. You move every day, build strength two to five days a week, and four Fuck It cards a month put the pastry in the plan. A six-week pilot for 30 people is open now.
Brigid took on
Turning the idea into a fully functioning app in less than a week, with 136 wireframes, a decision log and a website.
People kept
The full art direction, the creative decisions, the interaction design and the language, built on anecdotal research and our own observations of who it's for.
Concept
Kith9: Protect the Planet
Today my street is a coral reef.
Every day your street turns into a different wild world, every real thing you find becomes a card, and the best cards come from planting a native or building a bee hotel.
Level 3
A daily venture school in your pocket.
In TestFlight
Faster Zebra
A daily venture school for starting a business from anywhere.
Eight Kit paths, one move a day with proof, a coach that remembers your business, and 787 lessons on a live backend. Parental consent and mental health safeguards are built in from the first screen.
Brigid took on
Taking years of our content from canvas to wireframes to TestFlight, on a live backend with 787 lessons.
People kept
The curriculum, our books, our own testing and years of know-how, with analog and digital merged into one way of learning.
Level 4
A daily practice for knowing who you are.
In TestFlight
Gospel of You
One voice a day, one question and one move.
A daily reflection practice from The Unfuckery, with María and Jesús as guides and a book with your name on it. Eight books, 104 pattern interrupts and 25 tarot cards are already in the app, drawing on fifteen families of wisdom.
Brigid took on
Building the app and loading eight books, 104 interrupts and 25 tarot cards.
People kept
Every reference is checked and every book is voice-edited by hand before release.
Top floor | The agency
Every floor below used Brigid for the parts it does best. Now it's your team's turn.
Brigid took on the production on every floor below. The research, the understanding, the empathy, the creativity and the invention stayed with people, because that's where the real innovation comes from. Knowing which part is which is the craft, and it's what we build into your team.
Brigid
We bring the system. Your team brings the judgement.
Brigid is installed inside your team's own tools, so you keep every record and every file. A person on your team signs off every decision that matters. The aim is about a day a week back for each designer, spent on research, problem solving and invention.
- Discover
- Understand
- Imagine
- Make
- Validate
- Deliver and learn
Automate it, assist it, or keep it human?
Six everyday tasks. Pick what you'd do with each one, and we'll show you our answer and why. It's the first thing we do with your team in an Untangling Day, in miniature.
Task 1 of 6
Rebuilding the Monday report
Ways to begin
The Untangling DayOne day with your team, mapping where the week goes and sorting what to automate, assist or keep human.
Brigid, Guided or The BuildThe system installed in your tools on a live project, with your lead running it by the end.
Fractional Experience LeadA senior lead inside your team, keeping the system improving as you grow.
Product DoctorA concentrated senior review of something that needs attention, with a clear order for fixing it.
Making things better for the people who use them, since 2001.
We started when it was less mobile first and more first mobile. Since then we've designed through WAP, Web 2.0, responsive, apps, the cloud and now automation. Every wave changed the tools. The job stayed the same: understand people, then make something that helps them.
5
challenger brands launched for Australia's largest insurer, each in under three months. Four are still in market a decade later.
5,000
customers for ShareCover, IAG's new insurance product, in its first 6 weeks.
3,800%
revenue growth for OneShift after a complete redesign of its experience.
- American Express
- Atlassian
- BSkyB
- CGU
- City of Sydney
- Coles
- Commonwealth Bank
- Customer Service NSW
- Department of Jobs
- Disney Interactive
- Fox Sports
- Insurance Australia Group
- Macquarie University
- National Australia Bank
- NSW Department of Education
- NSW Telco Authority
- Optus
- SEEK Asia
- Sydney Dance Company
- Telstra
- Travel Insurance Direct
- UNICEF
- University Admissions Centre
- University of Queensland
- Westpac
- Woolworths
Rooftop | Clients, partners and investors
Work with us, partner with us, invest with us, or bring us an idea.
Velvet Onion owns everything on the floors below: four apps on one shared setup, three story worlds in development for screen, and Brigid. Whether you'd like to bring us a project, invest, co-produce or build something together, this is the door. Up here it's a garden of potential, with things being tested, seeded and imagined.
Say hello
Tell Charbel what you're working on, how far you've taken it and where you could use a hand. You'll hear back within one business day.
Or email improve.life@velvetonion.com
We make better possible.