Early in 2005 Andy, Jeremy and I decided to take the plunge and start our own company. We announced our plans for Clearleft in March at South by Southwest and incorporated the company in May. But this week back in September 2005 is when it all began in earnest - we’d quit our full time jobs and started working together for our first clients.
Right off the bat we were an international company - our first project being a social photography platform for a company in Slovenia (thank you EU). We also commenced work on two separate university projects, for Lancaster University Management School and London South Bank University. This was something which has proved a theme throughout Clearleft’s history - so far we’ve worked for at least nine different universities, and continue to do so.
It’s been fascinating looking back through our early clients. We worked with a lot of exciting new dotcom start-ups - they were still a thing in the mid-2000s - as well as many third sector organisations. Charities and the public sector were a feature of our first business plan, and ever since then we’ve strived to work with organisations where we can make a difference to both the outside world and within the company. Another source of pride is just how many household names we’ve worked with over the years - and in really significant ways - Spotify, WWF, BBC, John Lewis,Gumtree, Channel 4, Penguin Books, Virgin Holidays and the Natural History Museum to name just a few.
Our first business cards stated that “we make websites better”. This modest goal deliberately hinted at our dedication to user-centred design and forward-looking front-end development. That commitment still stands, but a significant difference is that we now look to improve things from the inside: working closely with in-house design teams, we try to make them better too. In hindsight this is an approach we’ve long recognised makes a longer term impact, as demonstrated by our pioneering approaches to design systems and what is now known as design ops.
Right from those first months together in 2005, we’ve had improving the practice of design at the forefront of our minds, from Jeremy’s early Ajax workshops to Andy’s curation of the first d.Construct conference only three months in, and with UX London just three years later (a huge gamble at the time).
Ask anyone who’s worked with, or for, Clearleft and they’ll say it’s all about the people. While growing from three people, to a team closer to 30, we’ve managed to attract and retain the very best. Not just the most experienced and skilled, but the most dedicated and nicest people to work with. If we’ve done anything right over the last 15 years it’s been that.
And as we negotiate our way through this tumultuous year, it’s the strong relationships we’ve made with our clients and their people, which are seeing us through what could otherwise be tough times.
On that note I would like to raise a glass to friends and colleagues from the past 15 years, and to the next 15 years of Clearleft as we move towards a new phase in our history.