How Studio Freight launched Perplexity’s browser before it existed

Perplexity has already disrupted information discovery with its AI-powered answer engine that delivers concise, cited responses. When the company approached Studio Freight to launch Comet, its agentic AI browser, the challenge went beyond traditional product marketing. The browser barely existed – no demo, no feature set, no wireframes. Just a vision of more fluid, intelligent access to knowledge. “The brief was more of a starting point than a roadmap,” explains Aaron Marks, Partner & Creative Director at Studio Freight. “Our job wasn’t to explain a fully-formed product. It was to express a possibility.” Working alongside Henry Modisett and Phi Hoang, Perplexity’s Heads of Design and Brand Experience, Studio Freight treated the website and campaign as part of the product itself – an activation suggesting what was coming before it fully arrived. The cosmic theme emerged from a fundamental question about browser experience rather than space aesthetics. “We started with a simple question: Since there’s no product details to show yet, how do we show the experience of a browser instead?” Marks notes. The cosmos became the perfect abstraction for a browser designed to help users go anywhere and know anything, allowing the team to visualise scale, movement and curiosity without relying on non-existent features. Studio Freight deliberately avoided sci-fi clichés, drawing inspiration from 2001: A Space Odyssey rather than NASA posters. Orbital parabolas and planetary avatars balance with restraint, always leading with composition and clarity. The website’s visual journey moves users from space to Earth through seamless video transitions, creating a scrollable narrative that brings the infinite down to the tangible.