Create an agency, for fun
Our penultimate project asked us to create an agency for ourselves, whereafter we get briefed by a real client on their brand. This is the agency we made.
A common trait we'd see in agencies were strong statements like "culture focused", "design-thinking lead" or even "revolutionising". Not only did these agencies not produce the kind of portfolio that lived up to their bold statements, these words - their missions statements, manifesto's and belief systems - were filled with fancy words that nobody understood.
So we tried flipping their formula.
Human nature is seeing something you like and saying "nice", and when something is that simple it makes the most sense. This means not right-clicking on 'good' and 'nice' to find synonyms to impress people with words that nobody understands. Our focus was people first. If the work doesn't make you say "nice", then it's not worth doing at all.
Being nice is easy to explain
Nice is a lot of things. Nice people will make you coffee. They always say please and thank you. They know you want chocolate chips, and not raisins, in your cookies. It's about holding doors open, saying please and thank you, and making nice things for you.
Every agency needs branding
For the stationary we had a super simple branding principle - make things that's we'd like for ourselves, The only rule was that everything had to stay pink.
Nice content
We couldn't call ourselves NICE and have nothing to show for it. Show we created some brand shots exploring 'nice' themes - a suggestive hand leaving you something at the bar, an abundance of cookies and a tea party. We had a lot of fun making this content.
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