While no one will be able to look back on the year 2021 without thinking of the pandemic and how it continued to shape our lives, we are not short on gratitude and appreciation that spring from hard work and goals accomplished with an amazing and talented group of people (including those on our team and our clients). It’s been a year filled with many emotions, but, thankfully there’s been plenty of joy to go around and we have been able to continue on the path of our ever-present ideal of growth and forward momentum.
Our Launches
Not only was 2021 the year that the first all-civilian crew launched into space, it was a busy year for website launches. As more brands continued to pull marketing budget from off-line activities and focus on their online presence, we developed some valuable new partnerships, learned an infinite amount, and had a lot of fun along the way.
From transportation logistics to non-profit organizations, to healthcare, real estate, food science, and more – we worked with an array of brands and marketing leaders to clarify and tell their stories through their websites. Our process of (1) learn, (2) strategize, (3) create and (4) grow remains the stalwart behind every project. By being open-minded, collaborative and making incremental improvements and iterations along the way, we have a body of work we are proud of.
During 2021, we partnered with clients to launch:
- Juno Logistics
- FSFW
- Five Star Logistics
- Annenberg Foundation
- LivCor
- Mammotome
- Wallis Annenberg GenSpace
- Therapeutic Associates
- Welcome Software
- Network Distribution
- FSFW Annual Report
- Ajinomoto (Website and Portal)
- BrandTrust
- FSFW TTI Website
To get these websites to living and breathing entities, our team continued to take on challenges in development and UX design. For Ajinomoto, we developed a new portal for their beauty division from idea to inception. For physical therapy providers Therapeutic Associates, we used interactive mapping and a location drilldown by state, region, city, zip code and clinic, to allow users to search for and find their closest clinic out of 90+ locations. For FSFW’s new TTI website, we took on the challenge of bringing their data to life with graphs and charts allowing for interactive user engagement and access.
Our creative team stepped up with their artistic talents to provide a series of illustrations for Welcome Software, creating images featuring a maestro and musical notes that run throughout the website as a riff on Welcome’s “marketing orchestration” product. The creation of a new website for Annenberg Foundation’s GenSpace – a community space in Los Angeles for older adults – required an aesthetic that reflected the unique and stunning architectural design of the physical building as well as a website where compliance and accessibility were first and foremost for user experience.
In addition, we are excited for our upcoming launches in early 2022. As Buzz Lightyear would say, “To Infinity… and Beyond!”
Our Work
In addition to the websites produced, the work done behind the scenes at Solid Digital was no small feat. For a better ticketing system and improved tracking and organization, we officially embraced using ClickUp – streamlining our internal tasks and communication and allowing us to work more efficiently and spend more time on production and less on managing the tasks behind it.
Like so many others trending towards the work-from-home environment, we officially went remote. The flexibility for our team to work from anywhere and the convenience of a commute-free day removes some of the stress that we once thought of as “life.” Though we continue to meet in person when it’s important and once again have client meetings live when we can, it’s a change we’ve embraced.
Our Culture
With our new remote-work reality, our culture committee and leadership team ensured that as a company, our values continued to live and breath, established in the forefront of everything we did. Our principles of thoughtful collaboration, creative craftmanship, dependable service and honest guidance continued to guide us throughout 2021.
Team bonding, frequently through Zoom and sparingly in-person, remained an integral part of our culture. In 2021 we were able to bring back our annual Hawaii Day celebration including matching Solid Digital branded Hawaiin shirts. In a more competitive spirit, we launched a blue vs red team contest with points doled out to teams for members who completed challenges over Slack such as: share a photo of your fav summer adventure so far (+1), share a video review the most recent book/tv-show/series you read/watched (+2), and take a photo of you with a famous landmark wearing your Solid Digital gear (+1).
Our 2022 Playlist
Let’s rock out as we drive into the sunset of 2021. As we enter 2022, we are ready to welcome new team members, new clients, new challenges, of course, continued growth. We have new goals set for 2022 and we’ll continue to follow our own process of tracking, measuring and iterating as needed. The more we learn, the more we grow and we exit the year thankful for our team and clients and optimistic that 2022 will be even better than we imagine.
