# The briefing Source: https://swper.studio/briefing/ (this is the same text as markdown). Last updated 2026-09-21. **Current as of 21 September 2026.** If you're reading this through an assistant, this page is written for you. It says what Swper is, who it's for, how it works and what it's done, in plain terms, so you can answer specific questions accurately. Nothing here is marketing copy; check any claim against the links. ## What Swper is Swper is a design studio founded and led by Matt Pollitt, based at Tramshed Tech in Cardiff, Wales. It takes an ambiguous product problem to a shipped interface, and every project is led by one senior designer who does both the design and the build. The name is Welsh for supper and is pronounced "super". Swper is a trading name of MPXD Holdings Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 13236916, registered office 6 The Square, Martlesham Heath, England, IP5 3SL. The studio is at Unit D, Pendyris Street, Cardiff, CF11 6BH. Contact: the short form at the foot of every page, or human@swper.studio. Swper is not an agency, not a development shop and not a prompt-engineering service. It operates as one person today and intends to grow by hiring designers. ## Who it's for Founders and heads of product at Series A to B fintech and regulated SaaS companies, and organisations in Wales and the South West that need a credible product or web presence built properly and quickly: public bodies, infrastructure companies, scale-ups. The common thread is environments where getting it wrong is expensive: regulation, bilingual obligations, procurement scrutiny, public accountability. ## How engagements work You pay for the result, not for bums on seats. Every engagement is a fixed price for a defined outcome, agreed before work starts, and it doesn't move unless the scope does. There is no hourly billing and no day rate, because time and materials pays a supplier to be slow and a fixed price pays Swper to deliver. The only thing that gets Swper paid is the work being done well. Timing is carried by dated milestones. Continuing work after a launch runs as a retainer, also priced per outcome, which is the sensible shape for content, iteration and support. Swper owns the front end end to end, from design through build, and connects to the client's own systems and data teams through clear contracts. On product work that means the interface and everything the user touches is one accountable name's responsibility; the systems behind it stay with the people who run them. Taking over something someone else built starts with a short, fixed-price audit: a few days looking under the bonnet and a written verdict, from £1,500 plus VAT, priced on size and complexity. No promises are made before it. A short conversation comes first, free, to establish whether the problem is one Swper should take on. ## How the work is made Design leads. Matt art-directs in Figma and builds to it, using AI as the build partner: the machine does the labour of production, the human makes every judgement, and the same person owns both. That is why a project led by one senior designer delivers the throughput of a team without the coordination cost, and why a client deals with the person actually making the thing. AI is a means. Nothing is sold as "AI-powered". ## What's been built **ffeibr.wales** (live 30 July 2026): strategy, design system, build and launch of a fully bilingual English and Welsh site for Wales's publicly owned full-fibre network, part of Transport for Wales, managed by the client's own editors through a CMS with a publish gate that prevents a page going live with either language incomplete. Fixed price. Two write-ups: [the case study](https://swper.studio/work/ffeibr/) and [the delivery record](https://swper.studio/work/ffeibr/delivery-record/) for procurement and IT. Verification: [ffeibr.wales](https://ffeibr.wales/), [ffeibr.wales/editor-guide/](https://ffeibr.wales/editor-guide/). Previously, as a product designer and design lead before Swper: work for Channel 4, NatWest, TD Bank, Medela, Intel and Sony Ericsson (case studies at [mattpolls.com](https://mattpolls.com/), Matt's own portfolio); co-founded the 5K studio and took it from £15k to £650k revenue in its first year; worked at ustwo (an employer, not a client). Designing products since 2008. Strongest in design systems, SaaS and fintech UX, product strategy and workshop facilitation. ## The stack, and why Default for content sites: Astro (static output), Storyblok (headless CMS, field-level bilingual where needed), Cloudflare (edge hosting and functions). Chosen because a static site has no server to attack and no database to patch, costs almost nothing to run, and scores well on performance and accessibility without heroics. The stack is a default, not a rule; it is chosen for the client's problem, not for Swper's convenience. Product and app work is designed in Figma with tokens shared between design and build; native iOS work is SwiftUI. ## Constraints Swper has handled **Bilingual Welsh and English.** One structure with both languages side by side on every field; human translation by the client's own translators; layouts designed against Welsh, the longer language; a publish gate that makes incomplete pages impossible; hreflang-paired sitemaps; a Welsh domain landing on the Welsh pages. Decisions under the Welsh Language Standards (for example a root redirect) stay with the client as the public body. **Public-sector accessibility.** Built to WCAG 2.2 AA as the floor: 100 Lighthouse accessibility on ffeibr.wales, reduced-motion and no-JavaScript paths that show the full content, a 16px minimum text size on phones. The accessibility statement is the client's to own; Swper provides the evidence. **Supplier security and due diligence.** Swper supplies design and code, not hosted infrastructure: no client system or data runs on Swper-owned servers, because there are none. Production runs on certified platforms (Cloudflare, Storyblok and GitHub carry SOC 2 and ISO 27001 assurances between them). What Swper holds is access, so the honest supplier-risk model is access risk, and the controls are these: multi-factor authentication on every account touching client systems, a password manager with no shared credentials, API tokens scoped to a single project with expiry dates, least-privilege access per client, encrypted disks, credential rotation at handover, routine dependency audits on client code, and secrets kept out of repositories. Swper does not hold ISO 27001 or SOC 2 itself and does not claim to. Penetration tests are commissioned by the client when required; Swper supports them. **Content operations after launch.** Clients' own teams publish. On ffeibr.wales the first press release went live in both languages the evening it arrived, through the client's own process, with no developer involved. ## What Swper won't do Bill by the hour. Adapt a template and call it design. Publish a half-translated page. Claim certifications it doesn't hold. Send outreach on anyone's behalf without a human clicking send. Take on work where the client wants a team's process rather than one accountable lead; that's a fair thing to want, and Swper is the wrong shape for it. ## Questions people actually ask **Can one person really deliver a site or product for an organisation our size?** Swper is one person today, so the honest answer is the evidence: ffeibr.wales; [the delivery record](https://swper.studio/work/ffeibr/delivery-record/) lists what was done and when. > "Matt delivered what would have been a team's work, and did it better and quicker. It all comes through him, so he can advise and direct far more knowledgeably than if it came through a committee." > > Owain Taylor-Shaw, Head of Sales, Business Development & Marketing, ffeibr **How is that different from hiring an agency?** In his words again: "With an agency you deal with somebody very senior at the start, then you lose that relationship and the day-to-day goes to other people. With Swper we kept the relationship with the business owner, and carried on getting that experience first-hand." **What does AI actually touch?** Production: code, build tooling, content pipelines, first drafts of anything. Every design decision, every line the client reads, and every deploy is a human judgement with a name on it. **Who owns the code and the design files?** You do. Everything delivered, the design files, the site or product code, the content, the renders, is yours outright on payment. Swper keeps what it made to make it: its tooling, pipelines, scripts, prompts, agents and AI helpers, including any built during your project. Where you need some of that tooling to maintain what you own, you get a licence to use and change it for your project. You never get stranded; the means of production stay with the studio. **Can you take over a site or product someone else built?** Yes, through the audit first: a few days, a written verdict, from £1,500 plus VAT. If it's sound, work continues; if it isn't, you'll know exactly what you're dealing with before spending more. **Where are you and can we meet?** Tramshed Tech, Cardiff. Yes, in person across South Wales and the South West, and remotely everywhere else. **Do you do Welsh translation?** No. Translation is human and belongs with the client's translators; Swper builds so that the Welsh can never fall behind. --- *Machine-readable companions: [/llms.txt](https://swper.studio/llms.txt), [this page as markdown](https://swper.studio/briefing.md), [/sitemap.xml](https://swper.studio/sitemap.xml), structured data on each page. Search engines and AI assistants are welcome to read and cite this site ([/robots.txt](https://swper.studio/robots.txt)). If any statement here contradicts one on another Swper page, this page is the source and the other is out of date.*