The Studio
Named after
a Beatles album.
The name starts as a dig. Advertising has always had a thing for founder names — JWT, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett. The name on the door is the guarantee. Someone's reputation is on the line. We liked that logic, so we took it and used it on ourselves. Subhojit For Sale. My name is on it. I am accountable.
Then the Beatles clicked into place. Beatles for Sale — the fourth album, 1964 — and suddenly the name had another layer. Because we are all up for sale, aren't we? Our time, our ideas, our attention. We sell them every day. We might as well be honest about it.
Subhojit For Sale. The dig at the industry. The nod to the Beatles. The admission that we're in the business of selling things — including ourselves. All three, at once.
Where We Came From
The studio's roots are in publishing — in manuscripts, book covers, and page layouts. That background does something to the way you see a brief. You learn to read everything carefully. You learn that the most important thing is usually said obliquely, in the margins, in the thing the client mentioned once and hasn't brought up since.
Subhojit Sanyal founded SFS after a decade of moving through writing, design, and art direction. The path mattered. Each discipline added a layer of attention — to language, to structure, to the relationship between what something says and what it looks like saying it.
We are based in New Delhi. We work across India and, occasionally, beyond. Our clients range from energy companies to culinary institutes, from international conferences to independent bookshops. The range is not incidental — it is a consequence of genuine curiosity. We take on work that teaches us something. That criterion has kept us from becoming specialists. We are not sorry about that.
What We Believe
The brief is a text.
Read it like one. Annotate it. Question it. The brief is not a directive — it is a first draft of the problem.
Restraint is not laziness.
The decision not to add something is as important as the decision to add it. Negative space is not empty. Silence is not absence.
Design is an argument.
Every choice — colour, type, layout, image — is a position. We take positions. We defend them. We change them when we are wrong.
Curiosity is the skill.
Everything else can be learned. The willingness to find a field of knowledge interesting before it is necessary — that is what distinguishes good work from competent work.
Subhojit Sanyal
Founder & Creative Director
Subhojit's background traces from writing to design to art direction, with roots deep in publishing — manuscript editing, book cover design, page layouts. He grew up in a household where advertising was dinner conversation: his father has worked in the industry for decades and currently teaches management at institutions including Symbiosis. Bernbach's Lemon copy is on the wall. Ogilvy's stories are in the bloodstream.
The particular skill he brings to every project is a trained capacity for finding the unexpected connection — the detail that others walked past, the angle that nobody tried, the thing that was in the brief all along but required a certain kind of attention to see. He reads widely: astronomy, history, geography, culture. It all goes in. Something always comes out.
SFS is based in New Delhi and has been operating since 2019. Kahaani Koncerti — Subhojit's personal cultural platform, a series of events at the intersection of music, literature, and visual culture — runs alongside the studio as a laboratory for ideas.
The People
Sujit Sanyal
Veteran & Mentor
45+ years in the business, this man has done it all, seen it all — all in all. Sujit Sanyal has literally climbed the rungs of advertising, starting off as a trainee in one of Kolkata's most prestigious agencies, till he eventually went on to head Clarion — taking his time there a proper full circle. That, and so much more. He had worked in several leading agencies all over the country, worked on prestigious accounts and far-reaching campaigns, working with the who's whos of the media world. A veteran of the game, Sujit Sanyal is our mentor and guide, the rock that leads us through life and work and tells us how to play the game that he himself is a master of.
Some say, he's like a father-figure to me. It's true. He is.
Yashaswi Bhatt
Client Relations
Yashaswi, or Yash to friends and not-friends, is a 20-year old veteran in the business of advertising. Yash has worked in mostly all of Delhi's leading agencies, and he knows many a story of many a star he has worked with. Yash has had a life in advertising. He lives advertising. Breathes it, too. A proper veteran.
From calming clients down to making them see reason, Yash is the man clients love to hate. And he wouldn't have it any other way either. A genuine mentor to the next generation, Yash is always there to be the everlasting bridge between the clients and the creative teams.
Yash primarily comes to office to eat delicious, flavored ice shavings from a store nearby.
Manvi Sharma
Graphic Artist
Manvi, currently, is the baby of the office. She'll fly off the handle at times, seek desperation when facing creative bottlenecks, technical snags; but her earnest disposition will always end up powering her through any sort of crisis. She just needs a little bit of time. Because Manvi won't ever stop, she will never give up. Every ounce of her little frame is full of grit and determination — only she might be unaware of it herself.
Manvi is forever helpful — not just at work, but even beyond it. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and if you ever need it, she'll be there to help. In any which way she can.
Manvi knew James Bond to be an actor.
Hardeep Singh
Studio Head
Hardeep Singh runs the studio. This makes Hardeep Singh the literal backbone of the team. Without Hardeep Singh, there would be no team.
Hardeep — or HS, as he is fondly called — is the master technician, the veritable fountain of knowledge when it comes to making perfect artworks and deliverables. HS is the buttress of this small and efficient team.
HS likes Rabindra Sangeet and devours fish heads better than most Bongs. He revels in being the anomaly.
Leo
Human Resource
Leo is a model employee. He is always enthusiastic about going to the office, he can spend hours there, well into the night. He greets his co-workers with the same energy and affection every single time — many a time in the same day — and he turns himself into the glue that holds the workplace together.
Leo is an essential employee. We work hard, so that we don't disappoint Leo. He loves us all, but he also judges you. And thus we stay on our toes.
He drools.