A Designer’s Ghost Protocol

Jan Chipchase travels light. But after touching down in Myanmar in late 2015, Chipchase—whose design consulting company was doing field research on how rice farmers use their smartphones—decided he was still overburdened. So he headed to a local market and had his head shaved. “I believe I can do the best research by stripping myself down,” he says.

Everything about Studio D Radiodurans, which Chipchase founded in 2014, is stripped-down. It has no permanent offices and no full-time staff. Its website mentions few clients or specific services, but case studies and social media posts hint at the scope of its practice: dispatches from monthslong expeditions to places such as Somalia and Tajikistan; photographs of dirt roads and remote airstrips; references to unnamed global clients who demand “keeping relationships discreet.” If Chipchase weren’t design world royalty, the whole thing might come off like viral marketing for a Jason Bourne movie.