Long Live Helloworld

The Rebirth

Timi and I sometime last year decided to come together to build a product. We called it Helloworld. We had big dreams and noble ideas to make something of our foray into this creative agency space. We both have day jobs, but we wanted to own something we could shape up as we liked, completely. Moreso, digital companies and creative agencies in Nigeria have made shit of the word creative in itself, churning out unoriginal, lazy work to clients. We wanted to change that. We wanted to put so much attention into the detail of every job we had and make a name for ourselves and our craft.

We were just churning out websites

We built a couple of okay projects like the MADC website and ordertolagos, but ultimately, we weren’t exploring our abilities enough and a couple of months into this thing we derailed. We lost the plot of everything and we became like everybody else. We were taking jobs every now and again, delivering okay design, but only just working for the money. There was no creativity nor uniqueness to our work, more importantly, we didn’t care about details or craft. We were just churning out websites. We weren’t learning anything. So we decided not to take any jobs for a few weeks, sit back and restructure, and go back to the original idea.
We plan to make Helloworld into a full-on product company and foray into the physical and integrated digital space when it evolves from a side project into our main thing, but even as a provider of websites and apps, we have learned a few things; 1. The average Nigerian doesn’t want an identity. People don’t care. 90% of briefs we had all came from a standpoint of either “Make it look good” or “Make it look like this other website”. 90% of jobs came with 6-line briefs and no assets.

2. Clients couldn’t tell the extra effort apart. We decided to add an Easter egg on every project, and we only got around to doing it for a few clients, and even then they hardly noticed. Clients only cared about aesthetics, not functionality, not emotion, not usability.

3. Users don’t understand, nor appreciate. Except for a few “enlightened” users, there was no way to make the average person understand that what you’re doing is work that requires good thinking and not playing a video game on your laptop that they can’t play.

4. And as a result they undercharge. Generally, design is undervalued in Nigeria. People want to pay the most miserables of prices, provide no assets, guidelines, nor constructive feedback.

So, we’re back to the drawing board. But this time, with new strict ideals.

1. Our client filter will be much thicker, as we will only take jobs where the client appreciates the work to be done and understands that it means something for it to be done properly.
2. We require complete assets and a detailed agreement on deliverables before we even start.
3. Attention to craft and the little things. Extensive sketching and communication between client and us.
4. Easter eggs and unique additions to projects are necessary to allow us learn new stuff and keep up with design.
5. We will document every project we do, outlining the issues and things we learnt. We did a small tumblr for this.
6. Pricing will be upped. We demand value for the work we’re putting in.

By keeping the client and general public in the loop we hope to educate, and make people appreciate out craft more. Long Live Helloworld.