Hello, guys. First of all, could you describe how Your Majesty was started? Why the name “Your-Majesty”?
Good day sir. Your Majesty was founded by four, not necessarily likeminded, but equally passionate partners with a collected experience of 40+ years in the field of advertising. All of us had worked for small design boutiques as well as larger agencies and learned what was good and bad with each. At the end of 2006 Peter Karlsson and Emil Lanne, who were working at BBH, joined forces with James Widegren and Jens Karlsson to start up Your Majesty with the ambition to create a fair, fun and highly creative work environment for its knights to serve up some of the finest advertising work on the planet.
Bringing in our Swedish heritage we chose the name Your Majesty on two criteria. 1) A name that people remember and that in itself communicates prime, 2) A name that holds character to build a long lasting identity upon.
The fact that America has no royal heritage has been a fun detail that makes us stand out.

What was the hardest thing in starting YM?
The personal investment one has to make in order for the brand to breath, function and produce at a level that meets our own expectations. I'm not speaking dollars here, rather emotional, social and energy capital. Long nights, a constantly busy mind, time taken away from family and friends.
We were 4 people with 12 jobs. Now we're 16 in the New York office with three strong teams and things are absolutely fabulous, but I would lie if I didn't admit the ride to get here was rough.

What is the current status of your studio? Lots of projects? Maybe you can tell us a bit about what are you working on?
In the NYC office we're currently working on a heavy video experience site for American Express. This is a project we've been working on for closer to half a year that's going to launch in the next couple of weeks. For this campaign we started from scratch with strategic planning then went into talent casting, green shoot, keying, compositing, 3d dev and we're now working on final touches in video and flash.

We're also working on a major campaign for Yahoo, an information tool for Don Julio tequila and Urban Daddy, a campaign site for The New York Times, a campaign site for Nicaraguan rum brand Flor De Ca?a, a smaller identity program for an agency, and we just launched a campaign for Vitamin Water and a tradeshow motion piece for Qualcomm.

On top of that we're working internally to update our identity and a new site that reflects the current state of the company. We're very happy to say that all our projects are looking equally amazing and we're very proud of the incredible group of talents we have working with us.

We also recently gave birth to our Stockholm office and we signed the first house music artist on our label Your Majesty Recordings.

Are you planning to stay at a medium size, 10-20 people and not grow into a big agency with many offices? Why?
We grew organically to 16 full time employees and we feel that this is the optimal size for each office. We have room in the office for another 6 freelancers and that physical limit was intentional.

We want to have a tight culture where people all hang out together and know each other and that gets a lot tougher the larger you get.
Opening up additional offices means an opportunity for cultural exchange and new challenges.

As we know, your main office is in New York, why? What made you open an office in this city and not somewhere else?
It was natural for us. We were 4 people, all living in, and loving New York.

Could you tell us a bit about the work process inside the agency. When you need to build a web site and you start doing design. Do you have the idea already in front of you, which you discussed with other teammates and the client before. Or do you start directly in Photoshop and only then you show it around?
It's hard to answer this question accurately since it really depends on the project. Most of the time we pitch ideas in writing and provide the client sketches for what we imagine. Once they choose to work with us we sit down and visualize those ideas, build proof of concepts, animation tests, mood decks and finally designs. Usually several rounds of design before we get to a final that everyone loves.

Does YM do photography and video shoots for projects on your own?
We have a mobile photography studio in the office. For video shoots we usually rent studios of different sizes, and with the right type of gear, depending on what our needs are. For the TurboChef project for instance we flew down to Chicago and rented a studio there because it was convenient for that particular project.

What kind of studio services are your main ones? Why?
The list is long, we are a diverse crew that love to keep our creativity alive by varying the work we take on. We love strategy, planning and creative development as well as production and development whether it be a live action/3d music Video in HD or a back-end driven interactive experience in flash. As long as a client is looking for creative we treat them loyally and royally.

Will you still make work for client which is very stupid, but pays good?
We choose our projects wisely.

Please describe the process of any work you have done. For example the LEVEL VODKA Web Site. How did you get it and how did you get it finished?
Levelvodka.com was a really fun project to work on since we had an opportunity to work with incredibly beautiful photography and pay a lot of attention to UI functionality and typographic design. We were approached by Ad agency Great Works, that we worked with recently on a site for Absolut Vodka. They were looking for an interactive shop to partner up with and so we said yay let's go.

Most vodka brands claim to present the smoothest taste, the most luxurious experience, and the most premium offering. With so many options, how do we make Level stand out? We scaled scaled back, rather than added. Positioning Level Vodka as an extension of food and taste experiences, we managed to create this minimal and elegant site that offers up valuable mixing tips, recipes and a wide spectrum of cocktails by fusing food with art. The aesthetic approach happened to fit Your majesty like a glove.

We also worked with photographer Mitchell Feinberg, out of Paris, to put together the remarkable food art.

Let’s talk about more about your work environment. Do you go out together with co-workers? Do you think that kind of community is necessary for each design studio? Do still expect people coming to work at 9am as everywhere and it’s strictly important?
We work from 10-7 but we're flexible with hours. The social aspect within the company is something we value a lot. We want to feel like a family and create an environment where it is fun to go to work.

As often as we can we arrange events such as bowling nights, xbox and pizza, ping-pong, pool, foosball nights and some good ol' pint evenings are squeezed in as well.

How important for you is to have a good own web site? I saw you have just a temporary one. Are you guys working on something?
To be honest, it hasn't been important at all so far but now we feel that the site doesn't represent who we are so that's about to change.

Speaking about you, how do you spend your time when you don’t work? Or that never happens?
We all have different things we do when we're not working. We like Tennis, the gym, shopping for shoes, photographing, producing music, doing flips in central park, surfing, socializing, eating good food, biking, discussing the future of mankind, cutting hair, making short films, partying, concerts ... and we all like to just chill.

Well, thanks for your time! Thanks again for interview.
At your service. The pleasure was ours.