BORNFIGHT STUDIO® — the full circle
This year, we began to draw more attention to our web design work. It started with separate BORNFIGHT STUDIO® social media accounts that put more spotlight on our portfolio in order to attract the right projects.
We needed more room to talk about the webs we make but that would clog Bornfight’s social media and its existing communication strategy. So, being the divas we are, we just opened some new ones to have our own space — BORNFIGHT STUDIO® was the place where we showed off our web design and development achievements.
The S word
Initially, we were just showing off our work to get some recognition. However, this wasn’t something that happened out of the blue. At the time, Bornfight began to notice the significance of compartmentalizing. Lots of new projects came in and lots of different teams grew into units. The rhythm of work started to show its differences from group to group. For example, creative webs required different process than product design, development needed more time with the designers on one project than another, project management needed different approaches to planning and evaluation, etc. We recognized that the agency model of one-process-fits-all no longer worked for us. First there were talks about it, then there were meetings and finally, a decision was made to split into different ventures.
Bornfight is now a venture builder and BORNFIGHT STUDIO® is a branding and web production studio. Simple.
But, the formalization is something that takes time and we were impatient. So, to get a head start, we started doing the groundwork around late 2021.
Show, don’t tell
It started with some messy brand exploration, research, setting up accounts, landing page design, etc. Our aim was to show off web related work that everyone was proud of. Web Design can be a vain industry, you need to always mind both your presence and presentation. Gretzky was right, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t make. In this case, dribbble shots. Designers and developers know this — if you don’t show something new to the community, you’re dead to them. And if you’re dead to the community, you’re dead to the clients as well.
The beginning was tough in some parts. Making promotional material for new accounts takes effort in a form of planning, imagining and producing. The frustration arrives quickly when you start to realize your team just spent 3 days on a shot, often in their own time just to get 30 likes, half of that from friends and family. And we were lucky enough to have the Bornfight legacy in our name, so there were some followers to begin with but the name itself won’t carry you far. Standing out meant consistently pushing out more projects or creating new concepts when projects were still not ready for showoff. And consistency was the key. Everyone chipped in. Project managers juggled with nonexistent time to get us resources while also keeping things within the deadline. Developers sliced up concepts and shared frameworks with other developers. Designers set Figma on fire with mockups. Content strategist, of course, only wrote this awe-inspiring article. Real teamwork.
But yes, eventually, the work started to get noticed, we got more and more inquiries for the types of projects we want to work on and things started to make sense again. So as the product teams were slowly transitioning into ventures, so did we by becoming a studio once again. What was for a moment a few social media accounts, now became a company of its own.
The good (old) times
For us, it was kinda like going back to roots — a small outfit that has high standards and wants to make work worth talking about. With the years, some key people have moved on to different career paths but the mentality has stayed. The willingness to push things further, the inability to let the details go and the need to create legacies. BORNFIGHT STUDIO® is our way of bringing back the small-team-chemistry after Bornfight’s rapid growth over the years. Restructuring came naturally as a way of regaining focus. After sprucing up a lot of our processes and ways things are done, we feel we are now where we belong.
Right now, BORNFIGHT STUDIO® is focused on branding projects, creative websites & e-commerce. There’s a stable team of developers, designers, project managers and a content strategist with a history of 5+ years in working together.
This is big because knowing each other that well makes it easier to detect needs. For example, in the beginning, we would start off with the usual research — strategy — design — development routine but we learned we get better results with including developers much earlier and revisiting the content later as well. Thing is, you can’t pull someone out in the middle of production all the time so you have to constantly make sure the terrain is prepared — if you’re going to take a developer on a 2 hour onboarding meeting, make sure to use that time productively. Get the info you need from them and get the content and design in sync at that point as well. It’s like a slot machine — the project managers pull the lever until they get the cherries but if they don’t find a way to get all 3 aligned, we just end up broke.
Same goes for content, instead of having a strategist who dumps some research on the design team, we integrated the two together and they work hand-in-hand, usually live sessions in Figma. This speeds things up, requires less information offloading and gives everyone a better understanding of the project goals.
What’s next?
So, with some refreshed workflow and a lot of things to be done, we regained our focus and started pushing out award—winning projects and getting leads for potential new ones.
Some of our highlights this year were Gideon, TABU and PET PAK but the one we definitely brag about the most is our website. The landing page was recently updated with more content and structure so that we can finally say “this is who we are.” There’s trendiness, there’s quirks and there’s performance. We’ve heard both words of amazement and hate which is a perfect storm. Means it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but people who like it, really get it and that’s who we want to associate with.
So, to cut to the chase, go check it out at bornfight.studio, see how it makes you feel and let’s go make some award — winning projects together.
