Inside Clearleft

A behind the scenes look at our latest projects, ways of working, and what's shaping our thinking.

This year marks twenty years since Andy, Jeremy and Rich founded Clearleft. We're really looking forward to celebrating two decades of design, and exploring what that means for us and our clients in the coming year.

As the year draws to a close, we thought it would be fun to celebrate the quirks, triumphs, and memorable moments that made 2024 special for Clearleft. From croissants to lino printing, here’s a lighthearted look at what makes Clearleft, well, Clearleft.

I wrote a book about service workers. It’s called Going Offline. It was first published by A Book Apart in 2018. Now, it’s available to read for free online.

At Clearleft, we talk about researching in the open. We believe in being transparent about our work and processes. We love what we do and talking about how we work.

It is never too late to change your career. This is my journey to becoming a Junior UX Designer at Clearleft.

Taking a minute to reflect on the resources and events that support the women among us to further our skills in digital and tech

What is considered tasteful to some, more than likely won't to others.

Keeping up with customer expectations and market competition.

Since the UK locked down 52 weeks ago, we've been working fully remotely. As the vaccine works its magic, in a few months we'll be able to move back into our studio. What happens then?

It’s been an eventful time for Clearleft. As well celebrating our fifteenth anniversary, 2020 was the year that saw Clearleft become an employee-owned agency. It’s a year of change, and now we’ve got one more to share with you.

We realised that although our core mission and vision hasn’t changed in 15 years, our core proposition has. In some ways, Clearleft are still seen as a web development agency or a website design studio. Neither of these things are bad; they just don’t reflect what we actually do today.

2020 marks Clearleft’s fifteenth birthday. A milestone like this is cause for celebration, and celebrate we must, especially as we negotiate our way through what is a tricky year for many.

We share what we've been building into the way we work and look after each other remotely.

As of 17 March 2020, Clearleft have taken the decision to close our office and send our employees home, where we’ll be working remotely until the end of April 2020.

Back from UX London and sharing some thoughts on the crossover themes that stood out for me.

We’re looking for three enthusiastic interns with backgrounds across research, design, arts and technology to join our three month internship program in Brighton.

Clearleft cofounder Jeremy Keith was among a select group of invitees to a special event at CERN in Geneva to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Web.

It's 2019, so why are some of our core design leadership practices lacking empathy? We unpack what needs to change in the modern recruitment process.

Today marks 100 years since women were allowed to become MPs for the first time, but the story of equality in the workplace continues.

When Declan Cassidy approached Clearleft last year with a view to us supporting MakerClub, I was immediately hooked.

If you haven't been a guest of ours yet, you should note that we have a fantastic office with a large communal courtyard. We invited the talented graffiti artists Gary Stranger and Pref ID over to add some colour into our home.

Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, affects more people than you’d think, including me. To try and face some of these fears head on, I recently attended a day-long workshop ran by our stand-in project manager Matthew Matheson. Here’s what I learned.

I’d just bought a new camera when I joined Clearleft in September 2016. It wasn’t long before I was putting it to good use, shooting team portraits for the company’s new website.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Interaction 17 conference in New York with some colleagues from Clearleft.

The day I started at Clearleft was the first time I met Richard Rutter. I only recognised him because I studied the team photographs prior to joining the company.

Andy Budd describes our company wide meeting ritual, the 3 questions we ask everybody, and why we switched from Monday mornings to Friday afternoons. If you have your own company meeting ritual—be that a stand-up meeting at the start of thew week or a stand-down meeting over drinks on a Friday—we'd love to hear form you.

Last week I attended Webvisions Barcelona for the second time - I came away last year with some great inspiration, plenty of food for thought (figuratively and literally) and a few extra freckles, so my expectations this time were high.

It's been another busy week. So busy in fact that most people were too busy to say what they've been busy doing.

Work continues apace - we're very busy at the moment. And our gaff at 68 Middle Street is host to yet more events.

Objectives and Key Results—or OKRs for short—are all the rage in Silicon Valley at the moment. So we've decided to start a 6-month experiment to see if they'd work for Clearleft.

Just a week to go until dConstruct! It's all hands on deck in the office to get the last minute preparations sorted in time for the event. If you haven't had a chance to check out our speakers, then it's worth taking a look at the dConstruct podcasts.

August has continued at pace and all of the team have been busy with lots of different projects, including the final preparations for DConstruct, working on ideas and preparing for new projects.

Weeknotes and some wise words.

Weeknotes, sketches and sympathy.

Barcelona; history, architecture, sun and culinary delights; a great start to any conference.

Sophie recently gave a 'Strategy and Culture lightning talk' at Wired Sussex's Digital Skills Summit.

Notes. About a week.

The eagle-eyed amongst will have noticed an omission from last week: no weeknotes! Did you spot this deliberate error? If so, well done! You can claim your prize right now by reading this bumper double edition. Just for you, it's the first ever ...Fortnight Notes.

This Saturday a team from Clearleft rode the 6-hour Brighton Big Dog mountain bike race, placing well. Meanwhile Mark ran the Berlin 100 Miler, smashing the course record in the process.

Following a three-month tender process, we are delighted to announce that we have won a place on the BBC’s coveted Digital Design roster, beating over 200 other agencies.

Yesterday, much of the Clearleft team took a trip to the British Library in London. There, a lucky few of us got a tour of the Digital Archive facility with Dr Jeremy Leighton John.

At the start of October we took on a team graduate interns for a three month period to "design a product that turned an active digital behaviour into a passive one". Their internship finished today, so this is the story of the project, an introduction to what they created, and the lessons Clearleft learned along the way.

Our new home is coming together very quickly now.

We're really excited to announce that Matter – the scientific publishing start-up we worked on with our friend Bobbie Johnson – has been acquired by Obvious Corporation. Here's our part of the story.

Since Clearleft started in 2005, we’ve grown steadily but surely. We’ve spent the vast majority of that time housed by our friends at Lighthouse, moving from their smallest studio to their largest. We love it here, but we’re starting to feel a little cramped, so we felt it was time to strike out on our own and secure a permanent base for our company.

We've been going to SxSW for the last 8 years and have had some great experiences along the way. However could 2013 be our last?