Balance, but
do it smart.

Scales have fulcrums, so do levers. We find the balance between stability and growth for your brand, and help you lift a bigger future with less effort.

See our work Say hello ↗

The ball is yours to play with

Selected work

Pytol Imaging

A darkroom and film lab brand in Brooklyn · Positioning, identity, website, social

→

Together

A wedding studio that prints love stories · Brand book, magazine, website

→

No sides. Just the right balance. The world is divided into extremes, and brands are told to pick one. You don’t have to. Stability and innovation, craft and AI, commercial success and human values can all be balanced on one scale. We find the fulcrum where they hold steady.

Services

One team from first workshop to launch day

Foundation

Visualize your message, strengthen your brand.

Branding and rebranding consultation
Brand story and media kits
Visual style guide, brochures, photography and video
DTC website design and optimization

Leverage

Strong relationships build strong brands.

PR strategy and media communication kits
Progressive matrix communication
Offline event planning and organization

Reach

Stay connected. Stay involved. Stay together.

Account setup and benchmark brand analysis
Social strategy, content and fan interaction
SEO: competitor diagnosis and keyword planning

How a project
moves.

Every project moves in four steps.

Listen

Weeks 1 to 2

We audit where the brand stands today: audience, market, reputation and what is already working.

Find the fulcrum

Weeks 2 to 4

One clear position and the single point to push from. Everything after this is built on it.

Build

Weeks 4 to 10

Identity, story, website and content, made as one system so every piece carries the same weight.

Lift

Ongoing

Launch, PR and social, measured and adjusted so a small push keeps moving the brand forward.

Let’s find your balance

janemao0617@gmail.com

Founder’s website
www.janemao.com ↗

Studio
New York

Work

Selected
work.

New York to Beijing, business and aesthetics.

Pytol Imaging

A darkroom and film lab brand in Brooklyn · Positioning, identity, website, social

→

Together

A wedding studio that prints love stories · Brand book, magazine, website

→

Have a brand that
needs its balance?

janemao0617@gmail.com

About

We find a brand’s fulcrum.

Fulcrum is a brand and reputation studio in New York, working with brands across industries and stages.

Every brand has one point where a small push moves the whole thing. We find it, then build the identity, story and channels around it.

What we do

Full services and process →

Foundation

Visualize your message, strengthen your brand.

Brand consulting and rebranding
Brand story and media kits
Visual style guide, print, photo and video
DTC website design
Print production with our partner press: foil, embossing and specialty finishes

Leverage

Strong relationships build strong brands.

PR strategy and media kits
Integrated communication
Offline events and launches

Reach

Stay connected. Stay involved.

Account setup and benchmark analysis
Social strategy, content and community
SEO and keyword planning

The team

Jane Mao

Founder · Brand strategist and PR

Brand strategist with six years across branding, PR and integrated communications, taking global brands into new markets. Her work spans positioning and identity, media relations, launches at CES, IFA and CEDIA, and digital products, for more than 50 international brands.

Michael Tan

Creative consultant · Content strategist

Content strategist and published author focused on cultural content and advertising. Former Creative Strategist at Qiusuo Branding Consulting and marketing strategist at Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House. Also writes for the screen.

Selina Liang

Brand and digital designer

Multidisciplinary designer across brand identity, UI/UX and interactive experiences. She builds visual identities and digital products that pair clear communication with everyday usability, and explores speculative design and physical-digital interaction alongside client work.

Louisa Zhang

Product strategist

Product strategist leading product and engineering at NEXUSLUMENLABS. Her work spans AI creative tools, advertising products and game experiences. Previously, she helped an AI video startup grow from $10M to $60M ARR and developed AI tools at Kuaishou and Tencent Music. She is also a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University’s Generative Creativity Lab.

Yifan Bi

Full-stack engineer

Full-stack engineer with 5 years of frontend experience and a track record of leading multiple Agent platform projects from 0 to 1, turning ambiguous ideas into scalable, user-facing products. Currently building at a leading internet company.

How we think

Four principles, one balance.

Balance

Stability and growth, held on one scale. No side has to lose.

Reason

Professional, data-driven market analysis behind every creative call.

Ingenuity

The smart move that lifts more with less effort.

Delicacy

Personal service, with care for the nuances between cultures and markets.

Have a brand that
needs its balance?

janemao0617@gmail.com

← All work

Pytol Imaging

01 / 02

A Gen Z darkroom in Brooklyn, bringing vintage film to a generation raised on phone cameras.

ClientPytol Imaging

LocationBrooklyn, NY

Year2025

ScopePositioning, identity, web, social

01Positioning

One kit to open
a whole market.

The challenge was to make film feel new, not old, to people who have never held a roll. Our way in: a $40–50 DIY cyanotype kit.

Hook the curious

Beautiful and quick to make, it draws in people who have never touched film.

Convert the hobbyist

Photographers try developing at home first, then book a studio class.

Seed the bulk buyer

Gifted with a handwritten note to art schools and studios, it opens the door for Pytol’s materials business.

Inside the darkroom.

Cyanotype, wet plate and enlarging, run as a community darkroom in Brooklyn.

Scroll →

$Sepia and blue toned prints in a tray$ Pouring collodion for a wet plate

Large format camera in the portrait studio

02Identity system

Built from
a single plus.

We designed Pytol’s identity from the ground up: the name lockup, the plus-and-circle mark, its construction grid, a palette named after the darkroom, and a type system of Gopher and Space Grotesk.

03Posters

Untangle
your process.

A poster series built from the brand book: thin lines, right angles, a single orange plus and two lines of copy.

Pytol poster: Untangle your process, black

Pytol poster: Pursuing the extreme of the craft

In the world

Business cards and wayfinding

04Website

Book a darkroom
in two clicks.

A clean, cream-toned site that turns classes, darkroom stations and film supplies into one simple booking and shopping flow.

05Social

A feed with a
darkroom’s calm.

From the studio opening to Black Friday and holiday workshops, every post shares one grid, one typeface and a single orange plus.

Scroll →

Studio opening

Wet plate service

EMP 45 projector

Black Friday

Christmas campaign

Cyanotype workshop

Next project

Together →

Have a brand that
needs its balance?

janemao0617@gmail.com

← All work

Together

02 / 02

Together’s 5th anniversary event

Mood board and printed Together magazines

A wedding studio in Beijing and New York that binds each couple’s months of preparation into a printed magazine.

ClientTogether · 一期美学刊

LocationBeijing and New York

Year2025

ScopeBrand book, magazine, web, campaign

01The market

Fewer weddings,
higher taste.

Volume is shrinking, but the couples who marry spend on how the day looks.

6.1M

marriages in 2024, down 20.5%

6.8M

in 2025, half of a decade ago

78.4%

of young people want smaller weddings

¥200–300K

typical spend in Beijing and Shanghai

Editorial taste Spectacle Packaged Custom

Package chains

Hotel banquets

Ritual specialists

Independent stylists

Together

Who we wrote for

The couple with a moodboard before a venue: 1990s-born, first-tier city, fewer guests, and willing to pay for design and a keepsake rather than spectacle.

The opening

Package chains can’t offer taste; independent stylists can’t offer a system. Together had both, so the magazine became the reason to book.

Sources: Ministry of Civil Affairs via Jiemian and World Journal; youth survey of 1,251 via The Paper; city spend via ChYXX. Map is Fulcrum’s own read of the market.

02Repositioning

Make the studio
an editorial room.

Real strengths, low visibility. We pointed everything at the magazine.

A name people repeat

We built word of mouth around the name 一期美学刊, with every piece pointing at one idea: the periodical.

Lead with the magazine

The brand’s weight moved to the magazine and fashion aesthetics: florals, dress and ceremony.

Every wedding, an issue

The studio became an editorial office and each couple its featured guests.

Channels with one job each

A website for credibility, WeChat for finished issues, and two Xiaohongshu accounts for weddings and editorial columns.

03Beyond the day

A wedding becomes
a memory you can keep.

Most planners stop at the last dance. We designed what comes next.

The day

Fully custom

The issue

A magazine of the journey

The anniversary

A gift and an invitation

The return

A shoot, a talk, a salon

The referral

Friends book next

Anniversary programme · 2025

Magazine collage salon

Couples bring their own photos and make a memoir issue by hand.

The studio photo corner

An oversized magazine wall of past cases with a cut-out page to pose in, beside a shelf of real client issues.

Healing and studio-story salons

Themed salons printed as newspaper pages and shared online to reach couples still choosing a planner.

The line we built it on

Publish ever-
fashionable love.

Trends come and go, but love never goes out of style. Together turns the scattered months of planning into a magazine you can hold.

The Together street poster on a red brick wall

Brand book 2025Planning journalStreet poster

04Brand book

41 pages, from philosophy to pricing

05Identity in use

One voice,
every surface.

The team’s employee cards carry the same serif lockup, with black and white wedding photography on the back.

06Magazine

Every wedding,
its own issue.

Each couple receives a special edition: a cover, a table of contents and pages that follow their wedding from first ideas to the day itself.

An open special edition with a handmade calendar

Inside a special edition

Inside the special editions

Special editions 001 and 003

Special edition 001, a garden table spread

Special edition 001, an angel statue and story text

Special edition 003, a Moroccan room spread

Special edition 003, a winged installation spread

07Website · yqmxk.com

Built like
a magazine.

Black and white photography, hand-drawn illustrations, and every wedding told as its own story.

Home · drag to explore

Cases

Case story

About us

Next project

Pytol Imaging →

Have a brand that
needs its balance?

janemao0617@gmail.com

Balance, butdo it smart.

Selected work

Pytol Imaging

Together

Services

Foundation

Leverage

Reach

How a projectmoves.

Listen

Find the fulcrum

Build

Lift

Selectedwork.

Pytol Imaging

Together

Have a brand thatneeds its balance?

We find a brand’s fulcrum.

Foundation

Leverage

Reach

Jane Mao

Michael Tan

Selina Liang

Louisa Zhang

Yifan Bi

Have a brand thatneeds its balance?

Pytol Imaging

One kit to opena whole market.

Hook the curious

Convert the hobbyist

Seed the bulk buyer

Inside the darkroom.

Built froma single plus.

Untangleyour process.

Book a darkroomin two clicks.

A feed with adarkroom’s calm.

Have a brand thatneeds its balance?

Together

Fewer weddings,higher taste.

Who we wrote for

The opening

Make the studioan editorial room.

A name people repeat

Lead with the magazine

Every wedding, an issue

Channels with one job each

A wedding becomesa memory you can keep.

The day

The issue

The anniversary

The return

The referral

Magazine collage salon

The studio photo corner

Healing and studio-story salons

One voice,every surface.

Every wedding,its own issue.

Built likea magazine.

Have a brand thatneeds its balance?

Balance, but
do it smart.

How a project
moves.

Selected
work.

Have a brand that
needs its balance?

Have a brand that
needs its balance?

One kit to open
a whole market.

Built from
a single plus.

Untangle
your process.

Book a darkroom
in two clicks.

A feed with a
darkroom’s calm.

Have a brand that
needs its balance?

Fewer weddings,
higher taste.

Make the studio
an editorial room.

A wedding becomes
a memory you can keep.

One voice,
every surface.

Every wedding,
its own issue.

Built like
a magazine.

Have a brand that
needs its balance?