Hey there, readers!
When we started Village One three years ago, we made a bet: that by founding a radically progressive studio, we’d attract similarly progressive clients, who’d appreciate our strong values. That’s why our wishlist/blocklist was one of the first things we published.
And you know what? It worked out!
We can now look back on 30+ projects with 20+ clients—every day we get to team up with the nicest and smartest people, who all work at organizations we genuinely find inspiring. Almost all of our clients are non-profits, active in fields like journalism, open data, open source software, strengthening democracy or education.
Unfortunately we’ve never managed to show much of this project work publicly. Time is precious as a small team (exacerbated by our four-day workweek), and so our own communication is always the first thing that falls off the cliff on a busy day. Writing, designing and publishing extensive case studies? Sure, remind me next year, maybe. Every creative knows this struggle.
That’s a shame, because sharing our work is undoubtedly important: A good portfolio shows our skills, brings in new projects, but is also healthy for us as team … to be able to look back and see our achievements.
So after three years, we decided to finally tackle this topic, but without creating a months-long internal project that would inevitably never see the light of your screens. Rather, as a first step towards a full portfolio, we simply created a grid of project teasers, showing a selection of our work with short descriptions and a taxonomy of services. No long case studies (yet), just an overview. Range and glimpses over depth. You can check it out here:
Now that the grid is published, we can start writing longer case studies and replace the links one by one, to point to internal write-ups, rather than external websites. And I have to say, it was quite satisfying to work on our own website for a change, doing something for ourselves. Organisational self-care.
Speaking of which: How are you doing? Has your website gone without an update for years? Did you recently refresh your portfolio? Why not let us know?
That’s all for today—until next time, when we introduce our newest team member!
Take care,
Harry and the other villagers
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