Most rebrands take months. Build Week takes three days.
Build Week is Instrument’s pro bono creative sprint for local, underrepresented entrepreneurs in Portland. For three days, we put a full agency team behind one small business, giving founders access to the kind of strategy, design, technology, and creative resources that can otherwise be out of reach. The goal is to leave each business with the tools to keep growing after the week is over.
Since launching Build Week in 2024, we’ve partnered with seven founders across four installments, allowing us to increase our pro bono reach. The impact has continued well beyond the sprint, from accelerated launches and stronger brand visibility to new customers and revenue. Camp Yoshi, for example, reported $100K in profit, 80+ new clients, a 62% increase in web traffic, and a 40% increase in bookings following our work together.
For our latest Build Week, we partnered with Portland’s Deadstock Coffee. Deadstock isn’t just a neighborhood café. It’s where founder Ian Williams pours every idea he’s got: farm-direct coffee, streetwear collaborations, run clubs, block parties, and a community that has grown around all of it.
After a decade in business, Deadstock had grown beyond the creative system supporting it. The challenge wasn’t to reinvent what people already loved. It was to give everything Ian had built a system that could grow with it.
In three days, our team refreshed the brand, reimagined the digital experience, and built new tools to help Deadstock keep making, experimenting, and growing.
A sprint designed for momentum
Build Week compresses the creative process into three intensive days. Strategists, designers, technologists, writers, and clients work side by side, making work and decisions in real time, reducing handoffs and drawn-out review cycles. The speed comes from having everyone in the room, all day, moving toward the same goal.
That model also creates space to learn by making. For this Build Week, we invited two Portland State University design students to join the team, giving them the opportunity to work alongside Instrument designers and participate in the process from strategy through execution. One has since graduated and joined Instrument as a full-time Designer.
Building on what people already loved
Before Deadstock was a coffee company, founder Ian Williams designed Nike SB’s Custodian Pack, inspired by the ubiquitous yellow “wet floor” sign. That yellow eventually became a signature of Deadstock itself.
After a decade in business, Deadstock already had an identity, history, and community people cared deeply about. Instead of reinventing the brand, we looked closely at what people already loved, then built a bolder, more flexible system around it.
Designing a digital flagship
Deadstock is more than a place to buy coffee, and its website needed to be more than a storefront.
People come to Deadstock for coffee, streetwear, run clubs, collaborations, events, and community. We designed the site as the flagship expression of the new brand, creating space for e-commerce alongside the stories, people, and culture that make Deadstock what it is.
Going beyond the brief
With three days to make it happen, a new brand and digital experience could have been enough, but we kept going.
We built Deadstock Social Studio, a custom tool that puts the new brand system directly in the team’s hands. Instead of needing a designer for every post, anyone on the Deadstock team can create social-ready assets using the colors, type, imagery, and rules we established together.
We also hid a playable mini-game on the site filled with references longtime Deadstock fans will recognize, including wet floor signs, the Drip Whip, Clippers coach Ty Lue, and a Douglas fir. It’s a small detail, but one that rewards the community for knowing the brand as well as they do.
A system made to keep moving
The final system was designed around how Deadstock actually works. Ian and his team are constantly making: web updates, packaging, merch, collaborations, social content, events, and photography.
So we didn’t leave them with something precious or difficult to maintain. We built a system people can actually use, giving everyone from experienced vendors to busy baristas enough flexibility to keep making while still feeling unmistakably Deadstock.
Three days gave the work momentum. The system was built to keep it going.
The Build Week effect
Build Week gives us permission to work differently. To move faster, stay closer to our collaborators, and make more in less time. Deadstock was the perfect partner because they share that same instinct to experiment.
After just three days, Deadstock left with a new brand foundation and visual identity, comprehensive guidelines and motion principles, merch concepts and launch-ready assets, a custom AI-powered social tool, and a new interactive e-commerce experience. We handed off a system the team could keep using long after Build Week ended and we’re already seeing results.
Comparing May 20–July 31 with the preceding period of March 8–May 19, the new site drove a 79% increase in homepage sessions, an 81% increase in Add to Cart actions, a 40% increase in users reaching checkout, and a 125% increase in desktop sessions.
“For small business owners, these are often journeys that have no end. We start something, or we find someone to do something for us. Then we get discouraged by the length of time or tasks needed. But nope. Not this time! The skills of the team, and the amount of time they achieved it in was incredible. And the best part was that they all genuinely cared about the work. Truly inspiring.” – Ian Williams, Founder, Deadstock Coffee
