Growing up & glowing up
With growth, come inevitable changes. For Widelab, those changes were key to continuing our upward trajectory. As product designers, we know that brands need to evolve to consistently reflect changing markets, changing values, and even changing partners.
And even though the work we were doing was great locally, we weren’t visible globally.
That’s why we embarked on a journey to better position ourselves and our brand. The time has come to set our sights beyond our current community of satisfied partners and reach for
How it all began
It all started 20 years ago with the first client who was willing to pay Michał (one of the Widelab co-founders) 10 USD for an online banner. How Michał spent that 10 USD fortune, you’d need to ask him. But what we can tell you is that this is when he decided to become a designer.
Meanwhile, Krystian (Widelab’s other co-founder) was still dreaming of becoming a basketball player. With an interest in sports management, he hadn’t even considered the design industry at this point.
So how did these old friends get together to start Widelab?
It actually goes back to 2016, when Michał and Krystian realized 2 things. First, they work really well together, and second, there was a gap in the Product Design world. There weren’t any companies out there offering great design coupled with well-established communication and partnership.
This was when the guys decided to convert their first Dribbble clients into Widelab partners.
Quality-focused
The realization came early that hitting the ground running was the only way to test the market. We needed to see whether our assumptions were true – that providing excellent product design connected with business partnerships was crucial to growing SaaS businesses.
We were focused on delivering great value, hiring the best designers in Poland, and finding the future-of-SaaS unicorns to work with. As a result, we were able to support the growth of both our start-up partners and ourselves.
Our wide impression
Our initial idea was to offer a WIDE array of design services, as a design LAB. We still aren’t sure how the LAB part appeared, but we didn’t want to spend too much time naming the company – we had other big ideas to bring to life!
As time marched forward, we kept steady with our focus: delivering high-quality design and attracting the right (and the best) people for our team.
To date, Widelab has helped over 300 start-ups to grow and make billions of dollars from VCs. All the while our design and development team grew to 80+ people, with 65% being at the senior level.
You might think we’d be celebrating our success, and we are in a way… but more importantly, it was time to update our brand!
The wide guide: Our new brand story
Values
After a few years of working with and actively talking to partners and the team, we decided to do an in-depth brand exercise. We wanted it to be an authentic process where the Widelab brand would be a natural expression of our personal and longer-term employee’s values.
Simply put, we care about the people who genuinely care.
Tone of voice
We needed to remain authentic, so we spoke with the people who would know best – our partners and our own people at Widelab! We asked what they value most about our cooperation.
The values we outlined above came from these conversations and we felt that they genuinely encompass who we are as people, and as a team. From this discovery, our tone of voice just came naturally. We then divided our voice into 3 categories – globally, for partners, and for the team.
Globally:
- Professional & clean
- Client-centric
- Flexible (allowing for different uses of the brand when needed)
For partners:
- Warm & inviting
- Empathetic & mindful
- Honest & transparent
- Passionate & design-driven
For team:
- Supportive & collaborative
- Growth-oriented
- Inclusive & diverse
- Open & authentic
By maintaining this human-centered tone, we’re better equipped to understand the inner goals and aspirations of those we work with, allowing us to create design solutions that truly make an impact.
Love what we do
Finally, it’s time to do what we love – designing. Our website, pitch deck, offers, recruitment descriptions…we redesigned all of our content based on the new brand book.
It’s so important to both define and maintain.
For the website, we used the storybrand framework to define the user pain points and desired states.
This is how we crafted our headlines.
- Design a product users really desire
- Plan, design, and market delightful digital products
Putting it into practice
Revisiting primary communication touchpoints was one of the final steps of our brand revamping process. Now it’s all about ongoing communication, repetition, and naturally following and promoting behaviors that support our strategy.
We’re aware that it’s just the beginning. The brand will evolve, partners’ needs will change, and even our values might be different five years from now. Do extraordinary work, be natural, be flexible.
We believe that following these simple, but very challenging-to-maintain guidelines will allow us to surround ourselves with people who share our values and partners who will cooperate with us long-term. This is how Widelab envisages business.
Will you decide to go wide?
