Our Website in Three Days
10/2/2014
Day 1:
In July/August, we left our jobs in advertising to open the design and technology studio we’ve been wishing we worked at for years. It’s October now and since websites are still a high percentage of the projects we do, we ought to have more than a logo up at http://theexperiment.io.
So on Wednesday afternoon, after launching http://circle.com and handing off designs for a site that’ll launch in November, we decided to try and have a site up for ourselves by Monday. We’re a young and idealistic studio trying to establish good work/life balance so we try to avoid working weekends. That left Thursday, Friday and Monday to figure out and communicate who The Experiment is, why we exist and what we can show the world that’ll make the sort of people we want to be working with, want to work with us. What’s great about that arbitrarily aggressive deadline is that we couldn’t over-think anything. We made quick decisions drawing from conversations we’ve had over the years and in the weeks since we set up shop. It was exhilarating and there wasn’t time to worry what people will think of our choices. I let that cripple me more than I care to admit.
We had drinks in Minneapolis a couple years back while dreaming up The Experiment at Eyeo Festival. While we sat writing on the back of a receipt, we decided that when we ran our own shop, we’d ask three questions before every project:
- Will we learn something we want to know?
- Will whatever we make help somebody other than ourselves and the person paying us?
- Will we be excited to tell our grandkids, “This is what I used my time and talent to make when I was a young man.”
So that’s where we’re starting. We exist to learn, make life more enjoyable for others and if we’re at our best, create meaningful things. We don’t know how we’re going to translate that into a web experience but we are committed to doing it. We’ll find a way.
It’s 1:30 a.m. Friday now.
Thanks for spending this time on us.
