Stampede Design
Hi everyone, first off — happy Monday. I am sneaking this blog post past my people who are probably still sleeping off their Sundays. We have been quietly busy the past 2 weeks working on a new website for Stampede. We call it v3 and it just launched a few hours ago so big yay!
The new website is typeset in Arno Pro and Proxima Nova. It is made responsive with Bootstrap so go ahead and give it a try on your mobile devices. Everything else is crafted, designed and built lovingly by the team.
Taking the time to take things out
For those who know me as a designer, I am the worst possible client to myself. Ever. The new Stampede is four years in the making — something I’m rather embarrassed to admit. We worked on so many iterations only to feel that it’s never good enough. We put a lot in, then we took out a lot more. For every bit and pieces you see on the website, imagine 4 or 5 variations each that got taken out. It’s a moving target but I think we’re pretty close.
This gets personal because it has to embody how we see ourselves as a team. It gotta show the tiniest details and care put into every work. It gotta have soul.
Old and Gold
Working on this website, I realized something profound. We have so many clients who have been with us since we first started in 2006. In Internet speak, that’s ancient.
Back then, Dov and I never thought it would open up so much possibilities for us and the team to meet and engage with wonderful people and businesses from all over the world. We now have clients in four continents — not that we’re ruling out the other three of course, though logistics with Antartica can get tricky — and we’re increasingly involved in projects that are greater in scale, pose bigger design challenges and have the added benefit of changing the world. Companies like Globalish and Joota are not alone in wanting to make the world a little less reactive and a little more reflective.
Stampede clients, you guys are the best, truly. You keep us busy and then you went off telling your friends and colleagues about this bunch of people who can make websites. We hope we have presented your projects in the best light but do let us know if we missed anything or if we have stumbled over a few details. We did fine-comb the site and tried to make everything almost perfect, which is why it took us four long years to finally roll this out.
Curate and Construct
We used to bounce ideas off each other via email but then we thought “Come on, it’s 2014. Share the good things already!”
We started Curated a year ago, and recently extended similar concept with Constructs. You can now see the repository of design and development ideas flowing daily at Stampede.
We want Curated and Constructs to ultimately be the place where people who are interested in design and web can take small steps to learn new things, to be inspired. It’s our small way of giving back to the community.
StampedeZine
We have also began to send highly relevant ideas and web trends through our StampedeZine newsletter.
We even went to the extent of identifying different recipient groups and finding real content relevant to each group. If you have an e-commerce website, you will receive ideas and tips on how to engage users and get that conversion rate. If you’re running a social networking platform, we make sure you get a good dose of user experience and social engagement articles. The Zine was an idea I had during one of our creative burst sessions — read about it here.
We love that everybody has found the Zine useful and engaging that no one ever unsubscribed from it (or at least that’s what Mailchimp said). I hope the readership quality will remain ever useful to our subscribers. You can subscribe to the Zine here.
Do Good Things
We started the Stampede DoGood initiative in 2008 to help non-profit and foundations lift off their online awareness campaigns and fundraisings. It began with our local animal shelter here in Langkawi and has since extended to various non-profit organizations.
Recently, we helped launch campaigns and a new website for Foundations for Human Rights in Cuba. The team stayed up all night manning the campaign website during their Miami launch event, taking shifts in between to catch some sleep but never staying away too long. Talk about good vibes.
And So…
This is not the end of v3. We’re planning to add case studies, share our thought process, give this blog a responsive facelift and pen some helpful thoughts on how we do it all, remotely. For now I’m going to sign off and try to catch some sleep before anyone spots an embarrassing typo.
To the people who made this all possible — and I’m still refreshing my browser to see if it’s real — my biggest thanks to Dov, Zana, Shaiful, Iwan, Sani and Dahlia. It is my privilege to come to work everyday knowing I’m in the company of such amazing people.
It has been one unreal, terrific ride at Stampede. Here’s to more mighty things!
