About OLA
Every brand runs on two engines: creativity and strategy.
We built OLA with one of each.
OLA is a small creative studio in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. Two people, to be exact. We think it through, then make it — strategy and creative work that looks good and means what it says. No fluff, no jargon, no thirty-slide decks.
No account managers either. No layers, no handoffs, no relay race between you and the work. Just the two of us, working with you directly, start to finish.
01
The creative side
Kristel Sauter
Creative Director
Kristel shapes how every OLA project looks, feels and communicates.
Kristel's a graphic designer and advertising creative with more than a decade behind her — H&M, Adidas and Pandora have all had her on the brief.
She runs photography, design and the studio's whole visual direction, and cuts the videos and reels herself. Nothing leaves OLA without her eye on it.
She also runs The Type Bar, a lettering studio doing handcrafted work for people who still want something made by hand — not generated by one.
02
The strategy side
Álvaro Lachner
Strategy Director
Álvaro turns business objectives into practical creative strategy.
Álvaro has an MBA from Mannheim Business School and more than a decade running restaurants, hotels, gyms and other hospitality businesses in Costa Rica.
Most recently, he was General Manager of House of Somos in Santa Teresa. He didn't learn strategy in a classroom — he learned it running teams, making calls and building brands from inside the business, where getting it wrong costs real money.
He also built Costa Rica Decoded, a media brand of his own. Which means the content, positioning and audience-growth problems OLA solves for clients are problems he's already solved for himself.
How we work
Small studio.
Full involvement.
Local roots
We live and work where many of our clients do.
We’ve run things
Our advice comes from making real decisions, not studying them.
Just the two of us
You work directly with the people doing the work. No handoffs.
In it with you
We care about your growth as much as you do.
Have a project in mind?
Let’s make something
worth noticing.
