In December Facebook announced that it was setting up a design team in its New York office to work with brands and agencies. Now that team’s getting its first set of designers through the acqui-hire of of bicoastal design agency Hot Studio.
The deal isn’t a straight-up acquisition for the agency and all its properties (which could include offices, technology, intellectual property as well as employees), but instead transitions that agency’s employees into Facebook employees in the company’s Menlo Park headquarters and New York office. Those employees will be seeded within Facebook’s product design, communication design, research, engineering and content strategy teams, according to a company blog post announcing the news
“We began working with Hot Studio on a few projects several months ago. Immediately, we recognized the synergy between our teams and their remarkable talents. Hot Studio has a 16-year history working with some of the world’s biggest and best brands. They have an intricate understanding of what businesses need and a flair for building tools and resources to help meet those needs. And this is what we’re bringing them here to do - build amazing tools that help the brands and businesses that use Facebook,” Facebook director of design Margaret Stewart wrote in the post.
The acqui-hire isn’t the first time Facebook has brought a design firm’s talent in-house. In 2011 the company picked up Amsterdam-based software design firm Sofa, and last year it acqui-hired part of the design team behind Bolt | Peters.
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