The year seems to have gone by in a flash — as I’m sure it has for most of us. We’d like to take the opportunity to tell you all what we’ve been up to and summarise our 2013.
The biggest change was our move from our shared studio east of Silicon ROB, to our new Co-working space 200 yards south at Shoreditch Works. We wrote a blog post about this a while back, it’s been a great move and it’s nice to be surrounded by interesting people and companies, some of which have gone on to become clients.
In 2013 we’ve kept the core team small and centred on UX/UI design. Some fantastic output from our designers have allowed us to focus more on the overall experience of every project. For development we’ve been working with our long term friends Code8 in the Czech Republic to deliver a number of projects on Drupal and WordPress. We’ve met some great new development partners this year too, each has a slightly different approach and skill set enabling us to offer a broader service to our clients. We partnered up with the mighty American Pivotal labs to produce a delivery service project for Shutl (which sold to Ebay). We also worked with Touch Fantastic; a great iOS team in Brighton with whom we created a total refresh of the Shop Chat app for iOS7. What make these guys stand out from the crowd is their speed, efficiency as well as understanding of design, usability and how to get things done.
Towards the end of the year we had a fantastic front-end & WordPress developer called Grant in-house full-time working on a number of projects. Having him around on a quarter-year contract has cemented in our minds that we will be building up our in-house team in 2014. We’re still looking for a full-time dev to join us, so please pass on our post if you know anyone.
Work wise, I don’t like to single out projects, as each one has introduced us to interesting people and challenged us to work in different ways with new technology. However here’s a summary of a select few.
At the start of the year we helped Mash redesign their site, building it on WordPress then rolling out a sibling site in Australia. A moderately large responsive project that quite early on made us realise the extra effort that’s now required to deliver a polished responsive site. Behind the scenes the site has a custom landing page tool that allows Mash to compose a selection of portfolio pages and send as a private page to prospective clients.
We worked with Property Detective to further advance the product and help them to secure a further round of funding.
Our Lovestruck work continued to roll out across the web platform, iOS and Android as the templates were gradually integrated with the system.
We spent quite some time working with Tribesports on an iOS app, a complex piece of work that is still in progress. It was rather excitingly side-stepped by their venture into sports apparel design on the back of a highly successful Kickstarter campaign.
A client that Jon and I first worked on together about 7 years ago, Wordtracker asked us to assist in refining their suite of products and identity. They have a hugely popular keyword research tool and a highly intelligent and innovative team who are always looking for a new angle. Some of this is still being rolled out but their Scout Tool and main website were some of the first projects to surface, with more coming in the new year.
Pivotal Labs brought us in to help with the UX design of a project for Shutl – a service that enables super fast deliver using the country-wide network of couriers. A full working tool was delivered very quickly thanks to the highly structured working practices that Pivotal employ. This was great to be part of and the product helped assist in the sale of Shutl to Ebay toward the end of the year.
About half way through the year we released the update of our own website, which was an enormous weight off our backs. Again a lot of time went into the responsive work and it’s great to have a place where we can showcase what we’re up to, obviously!
We’ve continued to work with branding experts Winkreative delivering a broad range of projects, including websites for a regal central London estate, the Thai Government, a Canadian rail service and a Chinese charitable foundation amongst others. Winkreative continually produce fantastic content and brand assets to the highest level, a value that we continually aspire to.
One new site to watch out for in 2014 (that we can’t talk about yet) is for a client who knows an awful lot about wine. It’s been a real pleasure to work with this team. It’s not very often that you finish a first client presentation with Champagne!
In August Jon and I joined up with a couple of friends for an annual cycle tour, this year we took in 230 miles from Kings Lynn to Great Yarmouth on the National cycle network. A great way to check out our fair land. It sounds a long way but it was pretty flat!
We’re excited to see what 2014 brings, both in terms of work, the business and opportunities to grow & evolve. We look forward to continuing to work with our existing clients and meeting new one’s in the months to come.
Merry Christmas & happy new year everyone.
