OUR PRACTICE IS YOUR GUIDE.

We help founders turn vision and intent into brands people trust.

That trust comes from a focus on the parts of a brand you can control. The whole of identity, language, materials, atmosphere and the decisions that shape what people feel before they ever read a word or sample the goods. We work with businesses where the experience is the brand.

WHAT WE BELIEVE

  • Truth over trends — timeless beats timely

  • Restraint with intention — hierarchy makes places legible and memorable

  • Care for founders + community — the work should serve both

  • Honest decisions & direction — clear tradeoffs, no theatre

  • Craft where it counts — details that earn their keep

  • Build to evolve — durable foundations with layers that can change

WHY FK?

We believe your brand should represent the experience your business provides. We help you design the system behind the experience so the whole brand feels trustworthy, differentiated and true to what you’re building.

WHO WE ARE

ERIC NOLAN–Brand + Messaging Advisor
Eric leads the front end of the work. From discovery, priorities, language and project direction. He helps teams make the decisions that keep the message intact and the experience clear.

REBEKAH NOLAN–Creative Direction, Design
Rebekah leads creative direction across identity and environment, translating the strategy into a visual + spatial language that feels inevitable, beautiful, and usable.

Together, we’re a small senior team that stays close to the work and ships the thing, not a big studio with handoffs.

If you’re building, opening, expanding, refreshing, or trying to make your brand feel more like you start here.

What people are saying

Flatland Kitchen works alongside multiple James Beard Award finalists, helping them realize their most ambitious dreams. This work includes Milktooth, Love Handle, Beholder, Bluebeard, and others. Flatland’s clients have received praise from Bon Appetit, Wine Enthusiast, Sprudge, Eater, Indianapolis Monthly, and more.

From “pop-art beer cans” to ground-up environment design, “the common denominator behind several of this year’s hottest restaurants is a husband-and-wife design studio that started 10 years ago in the kitchen of a tiny apartment.”

Indianapolis Monthly

When the New York Times spends 36 Hours in Indianapolis, Flatland’s clients -- Milktooth, Bluebeard, Zodiac Vintage, Love Handle -- make up half of their stops. '“At Love Handle, that means getting away with putting things in your breakfast that confuse the brain but somehow make sense to the mouth.”

New York Times

“They have helped turn spaces around the city into places that make you want to come back time and again.”

NUVO

“Flatland Kitchen designers Eric and Rebekah Nolan had a very specific type of establishment in mind when Strange Bird took flight… ‘Landlocked exotica’ is the term they use to describe the bar’s heady blend of soft kitsch and throwback glam.”

- Indianapolis Monthly