Creative Brief
Table of Contents
Purpose
Show what inspires us.
Scope
Currently covers content from a previous creative brief workshopping session.
TODO
Replace/remove the significant number of broken links in the doc below (deprecated agencies and sites)
Creative Brief
Visual design is a communication tool for meeting the right kinds of clients and subcontractors.
We aim to establish visual standards to best connect us with people who will go the distance to make a big postive impact on the world.
Offering
- We rapidly prototype custom software using web technology to understand domain problems more deeply and demonstrate value early on.
- We do our best to embody transparency and maximize value creation for everyone as a side-effect of creating value for stakeholders.
Audience
Clients
- We are segmenting (filtering for) groups inside organizations who identify as startups but often exist in other organization structures: people who want to try something new and affect change using the web.
- Typically, small enterprises (50 to 500 employees) often with some technical acumen (3 to 5 out of 10), no in-house developer team, or an incomplete one that lacks some web tech areas.
- Another example is a funded startup that needs a world class web technology component such as a dashboard, customer interface or API. Persona: Tifa has raised seed funding and needs a prototype for market research, further momentum with funders.
- Lastly, we’d like to continue to pursue government contracts particularly when there’s a clear agenda for change using the web. - There is a movement in BC government to embrace Agile methods and improve software that we’re excited to support and be part of.
- The typical decider is the owner or tech lead of the organization. Persona: Barrett runs a private firm that developed a disruptive hardware component but doesn’t have web UI, apps or cloud integration.
- Their web app will touch many people. We’d rather build things that are publicly used by millions, because these tend to have higher impact (all other things equal), and create more visibility for us.
- We want clients who are interested in “growing the pie” rather than “dividing the pie”. - A warning sign of a bad client might be someone who thinks our hourly rate is too high for example. - An ideal client should be happy that we charge a profitable rate because: We want partners who want to make money together with us, not make money at our expense; We want partners who choose us because of outsized value, not because we’re cheapest; We want clients who push us to create more value for them; If we can’t provide enough value to charge profitable rates, we shouldn’t be hired by that client because both sides should find a more ideal partnership.
- We should be able to create at least $100,000 in value for the client, and should be able to charge a third of that. Our typical minimum contract size should be $30,000, so that they make at least $70,000 in profits.
Staff
We want to attract ambitious, talented people who are good communicators. Persona: Aeris wants a job that is challenging with lots of autonomy to hone her skills alongside ambitious and skilled peers.
Segmentation
Given our experience range is so broad, it’s hard to segment by industry. Instead, we segment by ambition.
Our value prop “Look at this wide range of great projects we’ve done: We can do anything on the web. If you have a moonshot idea, want to go beyond the status quo in our business where no one else has before, you don’t want someone who specializes in your industry’s status quo as they’ll deliver just that. We’ve demonstrated the ability to create next-level web technology that disrupts your competitors and breaks your industry’s mold. We create leaders on the web.”
Competition
Several other categories compete with us, including hiring in-house, freelancers, placement firms and agencies.
Of these, we most directly compete with agencies who do end-to-end web based software development work. Here are some we admire, and why.
- Dockyard - open source focused, profess to “make an effort to both teach and learn”.
- Caktus Group - They’ve focused on a specific technology (Django) to be best at. Open source
- TWG - Great services page, very clear. Agile, fellow Canadian.
Top google results for “Web Application Firm” and “Web Software Firm”. This means they have pretty effective SEO/copy:
Top company identified on clutch.io, Canada (that we actually like):
- Lift Interactive (Highest billable rates in this list).
Similar scope/approach:
- Five Agency
- Good process explanation.
- Breue - Super clear CTA “Get your free product roadmap today.”
- AndYet - Likes bleeding edge front end web tech, novel approach.
We admire these teams for beating us on contract bids :)
- Freshworks - Beat us at the Mines Digital Services contract.
- RealFolk - Beat us at the Concierge (devex) project.
- OliveWood - Beat us at the Queue Management System enhancements contract.
- LlamaZoo - Beat us at a VR demo project.
How we want to Differentiate
- Specialize in audacity. Work with clients to develop a stretch goal that’s exciting to collaborate on.
- Expertise in prototyping quickly to test ideas and market response.
- Pre-packaged best practices for avoiding technical debt, helping with succession, scalability, operations.
- Focus on our versatility, and successes in many different industries.
Impression
This is a web dev firm that has great technical depth. This technical depth should be apparently as soon as the page loads, simply from the form of the site.
Theme
Space + dreams. Space is a little overdone, lean towards the latter going forward.
Dreams characterize our values of working for big impact long term, enabling creators on the web, and making a better remote work environment for our team.
Tone
- Audacity. Big Dreams.
- Clarity and simplicity.
- Adaptability.
Design Principles
- All design elements should be intentional and have an explainable purpose. Less elements emphasizes the best ones. Don’t try to be clever or subtle. This symbolizes how we value clarity and simplicity.
- The design should be functional, and facilitate the intended usage.
- The design need not always follow design trends but should at least indicate we are aware of them. Cherry pick some trends that work.
- Advanced technical elements (3d, parralax, etc ) are good because they showcase out technical work but should not be used at the expense of being simple.
- We value clarity over cleverness and subtlety.
We like the ideas from Brutalist Web Design
Evaluation of Creative Ideas
To evaluate creative ideas, first spend 6 minutes generating your own ideas for the problem and write them down.
Compared to using evaluation criteria, the best ideas are identified 77% of the time instead of 51% of the time this way.
Inspiration
- Threejs examples
- Shader toy
- Lars Berg
- Teams on Dribbble
- Vector icons and graphics
- Monochrome
- Animated illustrations