Surprisingly, there is a bit of thinking behind this website. We tried to prove that you can be serious and silly within the same screen
Premise: most things online are very sad. These apps and website are functional and maybe even useful, yes, but they are not enjoyable. At all.
Perhaps we’re naive, or maybe in the wrong trade, but — at any rate — we want stuff online to be entertaining, to have character, to be alive.
Here, the intention was to make a website based entirely on meaning — without it being boring, and with some twists and surprises on the way.
How do you capture emotion and put it online? Below is our (maybe not very successful) attempt at doing that.
Fancy brutalism without the fancy
A design company should not show off. A design company’s job is to affect and transform other objects — companies, people.
Following this thinking, the website design is largely austere and restrained. Just 2 colours, primitive layouts, and unexpected font pairings. This is the closest we managed to get re: the impossible task of creating a designless design.
Following this thinking, the website design is largely austere and restrained. Just 2 colours, primitive layouts, and unexpected font pairings. This is the closest we managed to get re: the impossible task of creating a designless design.
A note on motion. Following the note on online things being alive, there should have been some animations. However…
There’s a distinct trend of animations-for-the-sake-of-animations, of “hey look at me i’m expensive” animations. Some awards websites with 4 Ws (do not confuse with 3 Ws) in their title are full of those.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But we don’t agree. We wanted to use animation to say something, to make a point, to have meaning — instead of just being flashy and showoffy.
There’s a distinct trend of animations-for-the-sake-of-animations, of “hey look at me i’m expensive” animations. Some awards websites with 4 Ws (do not confuse with 3 Ws) in their title are full of those.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But we don’t agree. We wanted to use animation to say something, to make a point, to have meaning — instead of just being flashy and showoffy.
Honest, meta, serious, silly
To not to sound the way LinkedIn does — like a tired middle manager without a personality — this website speaks in a plain, albeit slightly pretentious manner.
The whole point of this website is to display personality. To give a tiny preview of what it’d be like to work with these people before sending the very first email.
The tone of voice of this website is closely modelled on the way MING founders talk themselves. Friendly, human, helpful — with a touch of funny, meta, and weird.
The narrative contains two “tracks”. The main one, in large letters, Serious Business, delivers Unique Selling Points.
The ironic/self-referential/meta one is hidden in tiny letters between the lines.
The ironic/self-referential/meta one is hidden in tiny letters between the lines.
To really capture the founder’s personalities, we interviewed them on record and put the audio recordings on a separate page.
You’re probably as tired as we are of reading “We are an award-winning multidisciplinary digital design studio based in Whatever” on each and every website.
So, we put some tags — a lot of tags! — very upfront on the homepage. Kind of like bullshиt bingo, but not quite.
So, we put some tags — a lot of tags! — very upfront on the homepage. Kind of like bullshиt bingo, but not quite.
Well, this is it then.
You just scrolled through 32,767 pixels. Quite a workout, come to think of it.
You just scrolled through 32,767 pixels. Quite a workout, come to think of it.
Made by
Sergey Skip — art direction, design and development supervision.
Sergey Skip — art direction, design and development supervision.
Eugene Kudashev — tone of voice and copy.
Hoodies — back-end and front-end development.
Special thanks to Marc Seefelder, Dionne Lim, Kristina Würz,
Sebastian Müller and Matthias Röbel.
Sebastian Müller and Matthias Röbel.