Since our inception in 2008, our website has led with a blog, with some links to the site which allowed you to branch off into client lists, process, and such. There’s never been much of a portfolio on the site, and we just recently added our first, already out of date case study.
We did this because we wanted to tell stories about process, design, our work, and inspiration on a regular basis. We originally published on our own platform before moving to Tumblr in 2010, making no real design changes at the time, other than losing comments with the transition. Using Tumblr has made it far easier to publish with a more stable platform, a bookmarklet, and now a great iPhone app, but there has always been a disconnect with the site as a blog and helping visitors understand who we are and what we do.
So we decided back in January 2012 (following a failed courtship process) that it was time to move from a blog driven site to a site that better showcased the work we do. This didn’t just mean showing more portfolio work. More importantly, it meant giving people an immediate understanding of what we do because having a website that’s all logo and words doesn’t immediately scream ‘product design’.
So, here’s the story of how our new site, one year in the making, came to be.
We did a survey.
We got booted out of our office.
We took a couple of months off.
We did some brainstorming.
We did some sketches.
We agreed on a concept.
We did some mockups.
We took some photos.
We refined the concept.
We made a teaser video.
We took more photos.
And made a making-of video at the same time.
We did more mockups.
We talked responsiveness.
And we talked about interactions.
We started playing with code.
We decided to keep Tumblr, but make it new-site-pretty, too.
We did some more code.
We shared some mockups, interactions, and ideas with folks.
And made some changes.
Then we launched the site.
And here we are today. We’d love your feedback, by email, reblog, Twitter, or phone.