Designdough begins. Joe is sitting in his spare bedroom with a new mortgage and no job. After years of freelancing, full-time employment and a bit of travelling, he decides it’s now or never. It has to work.

Hello credit crunch. Sh*t. But somehow, it presents an opportunity. Larger agencies are downsizing giving smaller studios like designdough a chance to go for larger clients who need design work for a fraction of the cost. And so, we start working with our first big client — Cardiff University. Well cool.

Joe is fed up with working from home and decides to get his first studio on West Bute Street with Kevin from Codeworks (hey Kevin!). designdough and Codeworks start collaborating on projects — we take the creative side and Codeworks take the technical, web development side. Epic.

James joins designdough as Junior Designer (he’s worked his way up to Creative Director!). We move to the Coal Exchange and welcome another two team members to keep James company whilst Joe is out getting the work. On top of this, another great partnership is born – this time with product design agency, Conka.

We take on DVS (our biggest client to date) and it changes the way we work. They have an ambitious growth strategy and need the brand to match. No pressure! But we did it, and it worked. It’s the start of our real love affair with branding.

Another move as the Exchange becomes a hotel. Now we’re in the Maltings and ready to grow again. We start the print arm of the business and employ a Print Designer. Mega exciting.

Our clients are getting bigger and better. We focus predominantly on brand and print projects at the moment, but know that web is going to be a huge part of our future. We take web development in-house.

This is a big year. We turn 10, we move again, and we decide to rebrand. Things are moving quickly so we get a new growth strategy in place built around our developed services and the three prongs of our business — brand, graphic, and web. The team grows again.

Our best year ever! We move studios again (another building sold to be something else), welcome new team members on board, and work with some fantastic clients. What could go wrong…

The pandemic! Yep. It’s difficult. It’s brutal. But true to our ethos and agile thinking, we take it in our stride and adapt. We continue to work from home and take the opportunity to reflect on where we are and where we want to be next. Change isn’t a bad thing. It’s not always comfortable, but it’s necessary. This bump in the road makes us stronger.

It’s our 15th birthday! The pandemic is still here but so are we and we’re grateful. We’ve grown again (how lucky are we) and yes, you guessed it, another move. But what a studio! We’re back in Bute Street where it all started. We have an awesome team, amazing clients, and we’re loving it.