Twitter acquired the full-service design agency Ueno, adding the firm’s nearly 50 employees to improve the quality of its social-media service and speed the rollout of new products. The move means Ueno will soon close its doors but no before wrapping up its currently existing projects.

Ueno, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Reykjavik, Iceland, has worked with a wide array of clients over the years, such as Google, Facebook, Uber.

Twitter was also part of that list. Since 2019, Ueno has collaborated with the social media network in different projects.

“We worked to help establish a new vision and product strategy for one of the cornerstone teams at Twitter. After some early hiccups the project became a huge success,” said Ueno’s founder and CEO Haraldur Thorleifsson. This led to long-term talks since then for the agency to join Twitter.

Time to reveal the rebrand. https://t.co/zlkF05iG1Y

— Halli (@iamharaldur) January 6, 2021

Twitter made a number of deals colloquially known as acqui-hires, or purchases intended mainly to bring on new talent and teams of workers, in the past month or so, including social video app Squad and podcast firm Breaker. A Twitter spokesperson said they are “continuing to attract talent” that complements their teams.

Thorleifsson founded Ueno in his living room in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2014, and has won multiple Webby Awards and designer of the year awards. He wrote a blog post to make the announcement official, claiming it was a difficult decision after “putting so much” of his like into the agency over the years.

“I feel like we won the agency game and there were no more things to prove. No more worlds to conquer. And so instead of going on just for the sake of it I’m proud we are able to end the story with a happy ending. Lastly, I’m proud we can start a new story together with new challenges, new worlds,” he wrote.

Twitter Chief Design Officer Dantley Davis also announced the news, saying Ueno has a “highly experienced and innovative team of designers, strategists, and producers.” He also said the team will help Twitter to “accelerate the quality and execution of Twitter’s product experiences.”

As an existing client of Ueno’s, we’ve seen firsthand how innovative and impactful they’ve been to our teams so we’re looking forward to bringing them on and continuing our work together. Welcome to the flock, team! 🎉

— Dantley Davis (@dantley) January 6, 2021

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