The team

Ilse Heide Martins

Co-Founder, Brand & Creative Direction

Trained for film. Working in brand. The eye stays the same.

Education

BA Motion Picture Medium, AFDA

Specialisation

Costume, makeup, styling, production design

At Emoji since

2016, Partner since 2019

First solo CD lead

Bué, brand to truck wrap in 3 weeks

Ilse joined Emoji in 2016 and became a partner in 2019 when one of the original founders transitioned out. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Motion Picture Medium from AFDA, with deep specialisation in costume, makeup, styling, and production design: the disciplines that build the worlds film audiences actually see and feel.

Before Emoji, she worked across film production environments where every prop, fabric, and surface had to read correctly on camera. That training shapes everything she does now. A logo isn't just a logo to Ilse: it's a material, with weight and texture and the way it sits next to other things. A brand isn't a colour palette and a typeface: it's a designed object that has to hold up across every surface a customer encounters.

She leads brand identity at the studio: positioning systems, visual languages, brand guidelines, and the design direction across every creative deliverable Emoji ships. Notable projects include Bué, where she ran her first solo lead as creative director and built the brand from naming through to truck wrap in three weeks; Peralusa, the full identity for a luxury Portuguese pouf brand; and the visual systems that anchor Monserrate and Zaka.

A brand isn't a colour palette and a typeface: it's a designed object that has to hold up across every surface a customer encounters.

She's the person on the team who notices what others miss: the kerning two pixels off, the inconsistency on the inside flap of a brand guideline, the photograph that almost works.

The rest of the team

Daniel Martins

Founder

Studio lead and the person clients deal with directly. Owns the strategy, runs the calls, leads every shoot from concept through to the final cut.

Inge Heide

Paid Media Specialist

Trained at one of South Africa's most respected retailers. Fine arts graduate. Sanlam Portrait Award-selected artist. The kind of analytical eye that treats every campaign like a portrait: every detail there for a reason.