coma.design

What It Is

CoMa is a design studio and publisher founded by Cornelia Blatter and Marcel Hermans in 1996, with bases in Amsterdam and New York. According to the website, its core identity is not that of an online design tool, but a provider of bespoke design services for cultural and commercial clients. In 2024, it also launched CoMa artbooks, a micro-publishing imprint focused on limited-edition art books.

Core Capabilities

CoMa is deeply rooted in editorial design and emphasizes the creation of visual narratives through design. Its projects span books, magazines, brand identities, exhibitions, and websites, serving institutions, organizations, companies, as well as writers, editors, publishers, photographers, artists, architects, curators, critics, distributors, programmers, and printers. Stylistically, the website explicitly describes a blend of Swiss precision, Dutch directness, and a sense of fun drawn from American popular culture—an approach that is especially valuable for cultural publishing, art projects, and brand projects that require a strong narrative dimension.

Publishing and Teaching

CoMa artbooks focuses on limited-edition art books created in collaboration with artists. Rather than aiming for panoramic portfolios, it builds each publication around a single theme or narrative, with particular attention to paper, color, printing, and binding. In addition, the two founders have served as critics, lecturers, or workshop instructors at institutions such as Yale, RISD, CalArts, and ArtCenter, and founded COMA Dutch designLAB, suggesting that their methodology also has an educational and research-oriented dimension.

Pricing and Rights

The website does not disclose specific pricing, packages, payment methods, copyright ownership, or licensing terms. Given the nature of its services, CoMa is likely to work on a project-by-project basis with custom quotes. For art book publishing or commercial branding projects, clients should clarify copyright, print runs, image licensing, source file delivery, and the scope of future usage before starting a collaboration.

Pros, Cons, and Who It’s For

Its strengths lie in long-established editorial design experience, cross-cultural aesthetics, a strong focus on the craft of physical publishing, and visual narrative capabilities that align closely with the art and cultural sectors. The downside is that the publicly available information is fairly brief, with limited detail on process, timelines, pricing, team structure, or in-depth case studies. CoMa is better suited to artists, publishers, cultural institutions, exhibition projects, and clients who value high-quality printed publications. If you simply need templated posters, an online collaborative whiteboard, or fast low-cost visual production, CoMa is probably not the best fit.

Access from China

Based on the crawled page content, its actual access stability from mainland China cannot be determined, so it is currently rated as unknown.