03/07/2026
10 Years. A Note from Our Founder
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I want to tell you a story.
Long before there was COdesign, there was a boy in Dhaka who loved to draw.
He would look at the world and see it in composition. He would notice the balance of a shop sign that nobody else looked at. He would stare at clouds until they became animals and faces. He would find imaginary shapes in the surface of water and in the patterns of a floor. He would fall asleep thinking about colours. He wanted to spend his life making things that were beautiful, useful and true.
And every time he told a grown-up what he wanted to be, they smiled the way adults smile at children who do not yet know any better.
Because in the Bangladesh he grew up in, a designer was not looked at as a respectful career. A graphic designer was viewed as someone sitting in Nilkhet, operating a PC for nominal pay. And so were the copywriters, the illustrators, the coders and every other creative. Anyone who tried to make a living from their imagination. Their work was viewed as cheap. Their nights were long. They walked into their agencies at eleven in the morning and walked out at midnight and this was not a bad week, this was every week. Weekends belonged to the office. Bodies broke. Minds broke with them. And at the end of it, most of the work looked the same.
That was the world the boy grew up watching.
He did not want it for himself. And, more than that, he did not want it for anyone else who loved this thing he loved.
Ten years ago today, on the 3rd of July, 2016, that boy became a founder.
I opened the doors of COdesign with a very simple (and in that moment quietly rebellious) idea. I would build a design company that treated its people like people. We would work in daylight, not in the small hours of the night. We would take our weekends. We would go home to our families. We would call ourselves creators, not kamlas. And we would deserve it.
And we would do work good enough that the world would have to look at Bangladesh differently.
I did not have a template. There was no bespoke design company in this country to model ourselves on. Everyone else was starting digital marketing and advertising agencies, because that was the easier road. I took the harder one, on purpose. I did not want to be the fastest. I wanted to be the truest.
I made a promise, quietly, before we had a single client.
I promised that at COdesign, age would not matter. Professional experience would not matter. Which university you had gone to would not matter. What would matter was passion, empathy, willingness to learn, a commitment to quality, and whether the person and the culture, actually belonged to each other.
I called that culture the COculture. And for ten years, I have protected it like it was the child I was raising. Because in a way, it is.
I have turned away clients to protect it. I have turned away talented people to protect it. I have lost money and sleep and occasionally friendships to protect it. I have no regrets about any of it.
Because look at what it built.
Today, COdesign works with some of the biggest names in the world. From Dhaka. Not from New York. Not from London. From here. And the work meets a global standard. We are known for our quality. We are valued for our ex*****on. And in this house, at least, a designer, a copywriter, a developer, is treated with a little more respect than the world was ready to offer them a decade ago.
But I want to be honest with you about what I am actually proud of.
I am not proud of the awards. I am grateful for them.
I am not proud of the client list. I am humbled by it.
What I am proud of is this.
I am proud that I have sat with mothers and fathers, in my humble office room and quietly convinced them to let their children become designers. I am proud that one of those children is right now, as I write this, pursuing a Master's in Design Engineering at Harvard.
I am proud that I have sat with in-laws and convinced them that a designer would make an excellent son-in-law for their daughter. I am proud that those marriages happened. I am proud of the households that today have a designer at the table and a family that no longer flinches when they say it.
I am proud that we have built a safe space for women in an industry where women did not feel safe. And I am proud that today, most of our top management and most of our top COstars are women.
I am proud that shy young people have walked into this office in their first weeks and a couple of years later, walked into a client meeting and gracefully disagreed with someone twice their age.
I am proud of all the ways COdesign has quietly changed what a life in the creative professions is allowed to look like in this country.
That is the real work.
I have always said COdesign is a human-centered company. That has never been a marketing line for me. It has meant, in practice, two decisions repeated every single day for ten years.
People over Profits.
Quality over Quantity.
Those are hard decisions. They cost you clients. They cost you money. They cost you a lot of the noise the world uses to measure success. But they are the only version of this company I have ever known how to live with.
I want to leave you with something honest.
When I am gone from this earth one day and someone asks what my legacy was, I hope they will not say COdesign. I hope they will not point to a logo, or a website, or a shelf of trophies.
I hope they will point to the COstars.
To the designer running her own studio somewhere in the world now. To the developer building products with a global team. To the copywriter whose parents once wanted him to become an engineer or an accountant, and are proud of him now. To the marriages. To the Master's degrees. To the confidence in the way a young COstar shakes a hand. To the quiet, patient belief that Bangladeshis can build work of the highest standard, from Dhaka, for anyone in the world.
The company was only ever the vessel. The COstars are the story.
I was that young graphic designer once. The boy people did not take seriously. So I know exactly what it means to be given the chance to be taken seriously. I have spent ten years trying to give that chance to as many people as I could.
I am still a dreamer. I always have been. I will die trying to make good things exist in the world.
Thank you to THE ALMIGHTY GOD, from WHOM all of this came and to WHOM all of it belongs.
Thank you to my family, who believed in me long before any of this existed and never stopped.
Thank you to every COstar, past and present, who ever chose this place.
Thank you to every client who ever trusted us with your name.
Thank you to every partner who ever chose to build alongside us.
Thank you to every parent, every spouse, every in-law who, sometimes reluctantly, let us borrow the people you love the most.
Here is to ten years. And to the next ten, which we are only just beginning to imagine.
With all my heart,
Amit Richard
Founder and CEO, COdesign
July 3, 2026
