Ladies and Gentlemen, Introducing nGen Works
Seven months of brainstorming, researching, concepting, testing, designing and writing come to an official end today. We welcome you to the website of the new nGen Works.
For those of you who followed us on this journey, you know that we focused on who we are as a team and what we want to offer our clients. We didn’t look for the easy path, but the rewarding one.
This website is very much the manifestation of hundreds of hours of work in changing our approach and attitude. Over the next few weeks, my fellow nGeneers will be sharing our rationales for the new identity, website design and mobile design, as well as giving you a peek under the hood to see how the site was built.
Right now, I’d like to take you on a quick tour of the site and highlight a few things.
Homepage
“We use strategy, technology and creativity to help people get things done in the digital space.” It’s funny how important that sentence is to me. We didn’t analyze and tweak it like a mission statement; we just kept talking and one day it appeared like a double rainbow, except we knew what it meant. It really does sum up everything. The other content on this page helps establish our attitude. It also sets the tone for us being a little noncommittal. Do we build websites? Hard to tell. Obviously, a click on the Work tab shows that we do, but we aren’t approaching projects with services in mind — we’re approaching them with results in mind. As you’ll see, that makes for some interesting changes.
Approach
The biggest aha moment we had caused us to change the name of this section from Process to Approach. And that’s really what the content talks to. Every person who comes through our doors has different needs. No one process will fit, because a process leads to a predictable result. So we’ll follow best practices, but not get caught in a vacuum. This may be the biggest shift in the new nGen. For more than six years, we were very process-focused. We refined that process to be highly optimized for building websites. Afterwards, we often rushed clients out the door. We were very much an assembly line. Well the conveyer belt has been turned off. One of my favorite quotes that came from our transition is from Jeff Croft. He said “It’s not about deliverables, it’s about delivering.” That one sentence sums up the change in our approach.
Work
The Work section becomes quite the challenge. How do we show work we’ve done while we’re becoming a new company? What is the secret to a project being selected and highlighted? It has to have a powerful story. It may end well or it may end badly, but something had to be worth talking about. The four projects that have the best stories are featured. When you navigate to them, you are told the story through a series of slides, only some of which show a screenshot from the actual “work” we did. These stories are what we create with our clients and the service we provide to them. Websites and other creations are just some of the ways the stories can be told.
The slides are followed by a brief write-up that no one will read, and then by a traditional gallery for those who want to see what we created to help our clients.
Team
When something works, you stick with it. The popularity of the Happy Webbies illustration style is not something we would toss aside. Let’s face it — the damn things rock. The detail pages tell a little more about us and keep the fun, irreverent side alive and well.
Contact
The Contact page is traditional with one exception: the client survey. Believe it or not, it was only about a week ago that I realized the old online survey was trying to sneak over to the new site. Nothing would have been as sad as being so careful throughout all of our communications to present ourselves as a strategy first firm and then asking someone: “How many pages will your new site have?” The new survey is much more open and the answers, or their omission, will tell us a tremendous amount as we decide which projects are a fit for us.
Blog
While the content of the blog will evolve, everything else is basically intact. Even the old posts; all of them. It felt like there were thousands, but I know it was only hundreds. And I read them all. As much as I love page views, I don’t recommend reading them all. The other notable change about the blog is that it isn’t featured on the homepage. We really wanted to share one clear message there, and having random headlines mixed in would work against that goal.
So thanks for coming along for the ride, or just showing up at the end. In the immortal words of somebody, “It is what it is.”
If you’d like to see how we got here, just follow these links.
- Transparent Transition
- Transition Strategy Part 1: Who Do We Think We Are?
- Transition Strategy Part 2: Staying Focused
- Transition Strategy Part 3: Actually It Is Magic
- Transition Thoughts From SxSW
- Transition Strategy Part 4: What’s The Big Difference?
- Transition Strategy Part 5: Crossroads
- Transition Strategy Part 6: The Final Countdown
Comments
The new site looks AMAZING!!! Congrats nGen team, very well done.
Guys, the redesign is great! The content is so focused, I’m finding more and more to love as I move from page to page.
I know how hard it is to create/present your own identity and the time you’ve spent to perfect it has paid off. Looking forward to what’s next from the nGen crew!
P.S. Love the easter egg!! :)
You did it! And you did it before us; even better.
Lots of great writing and it’s clear you’ve spent many hours re-evaluating and re-jigging your company’s position and service offerings. The hard work has paid off.
What I like most is your point above about moving from the mindset and structure of Process over to Approach. That’s a big jump to make, especially if you’ve spent years tuning and polishing a standardized process.
As you’ve mentioned in other blog posts, if you want to go after new markets and types of work, you need to be open to fresh ideas and methods, just like you hope your clients would be. Sounds like nGen Works is on the right path. Blaze on…
Real nice work here y’all. Congrats!
Nice work, nGeneers!!!! Very nice… :)
Well done guys. I love the fresh look and I’m glad you kept the Happy Webbies illustrations. Most importantly, you kept the essence of the nGen brand and identity.
Congrats!
BIG UPS guys! I really love how the new site “feels”. It’s fresh and new of course, but at the same time it’s familiar and I recognize the company.
And while the website is great, my favorite part of the redesign has got to be the mobile version. You carried the feel of the site from my laptop screen to my iPhone and it feels seamless.
Seriously, really well done! I hope you guys celebrate today and plan on drinking before noon.
Great work, the site looks great and the typography is FANTASTIC!
Sam
There is so much to love about the new site. Great work all around. I love the work section, and how you display the projects you have been involved with.
This is a breath of fresh air for design on the web.
@Jason – Thanks you sir. Lots of praise to Jeff, Katy and Dave for managing the identity and design.
@Matt – The content was the killer. Mary and I spent a lot of time fine tuning it and making sure it was true to who we are and who we want to be. Super glad you noticed.
@Geoff – yeah we did, can’t wait to see what you put out there. I’m sure it will rock. The shift in approach was huge for sure. Tough to walk away from a proven formula, but we can’t move forward if we stay there.
@Keith – Thank you sir!
@Ken – We appreciate it Ken. Rockband soon!
@John – Thank you John. You know how much I sweated this, you were there for a few lunches.
@Adam – Coming from the company that is rumored to work with big names that even J. Jonah Jameson would be impressed by that means a lot. What?
@Sam – Coming from you, someone who loves typography, that feels so wonderful. Thanks Sam!
@Nate – The work section was my favorite part too. Trying to tell a story, not just show a design. Tough to figure out, but the team did it. Special props to Jeff who came up with the slider idea.
Congratulations Ladies & nGentlemen! The new site looks UH-MAZING, but I do have one issue – i missed the free shirt signup :( haha. Good job everyone!
Sorry I’m late to the party. The site rocks from both a design perspective and its content focus. Well done. I’m sure the redesign will feed your momentum.
Actually Aaron, we were just trying to clean up a little for a potential acquisition from Electric Pulp.
Carl,
Nice work on the new site! I’ve already heard good buzz about it here at Viget, and I’m interested in hearing more about the redesign process.
Jillian
great work, nGen team! solid design and the hard work shows. congratulations on a job well done!
Looks great guys! Well done.
Congrats!
It’s interesting point where you say that you create stories with your clients, and that your design work is just a way to tell them.
I promise to read those write-ups that no one will read.
I like the new site, really clean!
Congratulations, Carl! Great work.
I like the angled nav. And naturally, the HTML5 doc-type (I’m a nerd like that).
I dig it!
Wonderful work folks!
@ Sarah – Thanks! Something tells me one time when you stop by a shirt may just be laying around.
@Jillian – Happy to talk with you anytime about the process we went through on the redesign. It’s actually the basis of our new approach which hopefully lead to bigger and better things.
@Doris – Thanks!!
@Brian – Thank you sir!
@Emil – “It’s interesting point where you say that you create stories with your clients, and that your design work is just a way to tell them.” That is an excellent way to put it. Did we say that or did you? All the best!
@Bruce – You always did read every word. Thanks Bruce!! Now the question becomes what to do with the Client Guide??
@Stephen – Thanks for the kind words Stephen!
@Rob – The angled nav was an instant hit over here as well. The slanted identity Katy created was picked up by Jeff for the design. An awesome progression.
@Jeff – Thank you sir!
@Carl – You said it, I might just interpreted it in slightly different way. That sentence caught my attention because I find that way of working for luxury and privilege that my clients can’t afford. It shows that your clients deeply care about their products and about your work on one hand, and that they don’t mind investing in communication which will produce results with delay.
The new site looks amazing! Great work!!!
Love hearing the details the approach you and your team, too. I also love Jeff’s quote. It’s going to be epic!