Our story

We’re building the future
of digital craft

AETHER was founded on a simple belief: that technology should feel human.

Our origin

Born from frustration
with the status quo

In 2019, our founder Elena Vasquez was leading design at a major agency and kept running into the same problem: the work was good, but it was never great. Ships were hit. Budgets were met. But the spark was always missing.

She started AETHER in a small studio in Lisbon with a radical idea: what if we treated every project as if it were our own?

Five years later, we’re a team of 18 across Lisbon and Tokyo. We’ve worked with startups and Fortune 500s. We’ve won 12 industry awards.

What we believe

Our values

Craft over speed

We've said no to rush jobs our whole existence. Something great in 12 weeks beats something mediocre in 4, every time. Quality isn't negotiable here.

Empathy as engineering

Every pixel, every line of code, every word is a decision about how someone will feel. We take that seriously — not as a principle, but as a practice.

Radical honesty

We tell clients what they need to hear. The best work we've done came out of uncomfortable conversations, not comfortable ones.

Sustainable by design

We build things meant to last. Technical debt and design shortcuts are easy to rack up and slow to pay off. We'd rather get it right the first time.

The people

Meet the team

Elena Vasquez
Elena Vasquez
Founder & Creative Director
Marcus Chen
Marcus Chen
Head of Engineering
Yuki Tanaka
Yuki Tanaka
Design Director
David Okonkwo
David Okonkwo
Strategy Director
Sofia Lindqvist
Sofia Lindqvist
Motion Design Lead
Alex Rivera
Alex Rivera
Senior Engineer
Mira Patel
Mira Patel
UX Researcher
Jonas Eriksson
Jonas Eriksson
Content Strategist
Our journey

Milestones

2019AETHER founded in Lisbon by Elena Vasquez
2020First Awwwards Site of the Day — for Meridian's rebrand
2021Tokyo studio opens; team grows to 12
2022Open-sourced AetherUI, our internal design system
2023100th project. Shortlisted for FWA Agency of the Year
2024Started working on AI-powered experience design
2025140+ projects. 12 awards. Still just getting started.