Dogstudio is dead, long live Dogstudio!
Where we’re going, we don’t need roads
13.
2019 is marking the thirteenth year of the agency, and while we’re not (that) superstitious, we also decided it was the right time to step back, reflect, and start moving in a unified and consistent direction.
Born in Namur, a small town from little Belgium, the company was first led as a friend and family business. You know, mostly doing some graphic design, a bit of web, but nevertheless all about doing something you like with people you like. Fast forward, we start building some websites for local clients, a bit for the public sector, and then finally won our first major pitch: revamping a website for a major Belgian soccer team.
Excitement, celebration, intense project, more celebration. We feel we’re onto something.
Time passes by, and milestones too : First major recognition with Dragone and its Site of The Year (followed by a second one for the KIKK in 2016), first minor US collaboration with B-Rreel for Google, first major US collaborations with the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, and a secret project for Microsoft in Seattle, growth, bigger team, more awards, more international collaborations, and finally opening of our Chicago office beginning of 2016.
During all those years, Dogstudio evolved from being a friendly local agency, to a major digital agency in the country, but also progressively as an international digital production force to be reckoned with. First through awards (21 FWA, 26 Awwwards, 2 Site Of The Year, etc..), but also through successful collaborations with brands and organisations of all sizes, and from all over the world, but all connected by a willingness to try something different, and to try to stand out.
Now, over time, Dogstudio made itself a name for its high-quality crafted projects and its high expertise in building emotionally engaging, but yet usable and user-centered experiences. On the other side, little did most people knew, but we also developed an improved in-house capacity to deliver high-level strategy, data-led analysis, and product design for large organizations. Living with two heads in one body became increasingly tricky, and even if we found a lot of complementarity between all those different skill sets, it still felt like we were missing out on the opportunity to have two stronger brands instead of a weakened jack-of-all-trade.
Today, we finally took action and decided to create another brand called La Niche for our growth-strategy-led side, enabling Dogstudio to fully focus on its very own future.
After dozens of years spent on retainer-based relationships with AOR, brands not only built in-house departments, but also started to gain knowledge on the performing aspects of their investments. They started to ask for much-deserved proofs of results for the costly dough spent in agencies. On the other side, the unstoppable rise of new technologies, virtual, augmented, mixed realities, data manipulation, artificial intelligence, and such; challenged us in our constant need and actual capacity to provoke emotions.
Let’s be honest, we’re no hippies, and we value the importance of the right strategy to address the right problem, but we also cannot shake off the feeling the answer doesn’t fully lie in numbers, because before being a tiny part of a gigantic database, we are, at our very core, human beings in constant need for emotional reactions.
We now know Dogstudio’s future lies in that balance between exploring the needs of our clients, and delivering an answer which pleases both the mind and the soul. Our natural inclination towards blending mixed-media techniques, illustration, texture, or even 3D to our projects in order to bring even more value to the global story, is something we will embrace even more in the future as it’s part of our biggest successes.
Last week, after a complete internal rebrand not only full of surprises but also constantly pushed back to better serve our clients, we finally released our brand new website. Let’s still consider it pretty much like a work in progress as we have yet to release half a dozen of case studies from branding to other product design, through more experiences, but we can now draw a line in the sand with this new milestone.
We’re not only confident it now perfectly reflects the tremendous changes we’ve been through during all those years, but also better embodies that thin line between usable digital products and immersive experiences we built and perfected over the years.
After half a decade of speaking at major design events about the importance of details, craft, storytelling and emotions on a neuroscience level, we’re committed to an even better focus on those aspects which, we feel, are not only defining our core DNA but are also part of the future of a design-world constantly redefined by the ever-growing importance of technology. Finally, it’s also the perfect opportunity to better communicate on some areas of expertise besides digital product design, and where most people didn’t expect us due to a (guilty) lack of a more transparent communication on our side : Branding, Illustration, immersive techs such as VR & AR, and of course interactive installations & connected objects.
Facing more and more challenges on products designed to innovate and disrupt a given industry, this was also the perfect opportunity for us to re-assess our workflows in order to even better integrate our clients in our creative process. We hate that the word agility has become spoiled by constant misuses over the last couple of years, and we prefer to speak about accountability and flexibility.
Finally, and as important as they can be, we feel like there have been too many discussions about the choice of tools being used in the industry, and not enough about the meaningful connections we could make with other humans beings, because as funny and intriguing as they are, machines don’t really interest us.
People do.
We’re still quirky, awkward at times, and most probably still a bit cheeky, but we’re now confident the little agency in need of a voice to actually exist outside of its little town, is no more. Dogstudio now reached a state of maturity enabling us to tackle even bigger challenges, and we are definitely hungry for more meaningful collaborations with forward-thinking brands and organizations as passionate about connecting people together, serious about building lasting emotional bonds, and as ambitious as we have been, are, and will always be.
Let’s keep making good shit.
PS: We’re hiring designers & a creative director in Chicago right now!
Dogstudio is a multidisciplinary Creative Studio with offices in Chicago, Brussels and Namur ( Belgium ) committed to crafting brandings, digital products & experiences that move people. Our clients include Microsoft ( Seattle ), The Museum Of Science and Industry, Chicago, Navy Pier ( Chicago ), Crypt TV ( LA ), Quanta Magazine( NYC ), The Kennedy Center ( Washington ), Chaumet ( Paris ).
