Deadlines we set for no one
The internal project could slip a month and no client would ever notice. We'd notice. That turns out to be the whole…
Our Journals
Strategy, craft, and a few articles we just felt like writing. From our founder, team, and a few friends.
173 Articles
Music to work to
Get work done with Neon Thunder, the latest playlist our team is jamming to.
Onboarding a client is onboarding a team
When you join a company, someone shows you where things live and who to ask. We expect the same of ourselves in…
Sticker economics
Pennies to print, years on a laptop lid. The most lopsided math in marketing, and you can't buy your way into it.
The maintenance mindset
Nobody writes case studies about the outage that didn't happen. We'd like to say a word for the quiet work.
Seventeen drafts of this sentence
Anything that reads effortless was rewritten until the effort disappeared. A confession from inside the process, drafts and all.
Small rooms make big decisions
Every person added to a meeting subtracts something from the decision. There's a better way to be inclusive than a calendar invite.
Handoff is a myth
The baton pass from strategy to design to development looks clean on a process diagram. Batons don't carry context. People do.
Good light is the whole trick
The cheapest special effect on any set is also the most ignored one. It works on screens, too.
The second project is the real one
Project one is a first date where everyone remembered to iron their shirt. The interesting part starts after.
Post-mortems without blame
A retro where everyone is polite is a retro where nobody learned anything. Getting the truth into the room is a design…
Write the launch email first
If the announcement can't be drafted on day one, the problem isn't the copywriting. The project doesn't know what it is yet.