image by: Eric Ryan Anderson
After 2 years, nearly 30 clients, and countless hours of planning, the full Wild Measure website is now live. Earlier last week we quietly removed our “temporary” landing page we had up for 2 years, and launched the full site. As we did in the Fresh Exchange redesign, we created numerous site designs and re-designs to finally land on the final version of our now live site. We began by creating a huge site with many subpages and subsections, but ultimately felt it blurred our messaging. So, we stripped it down to a single scrolling page design and reduced our content to only the necessities. Minimalism has always been our style anyways.
We never anticipated how crazy it would be to jump in head first as a-husband-and-wife creative team. When we set out on this journey, we had little idea what the path would look like. In the moment we felt fully conscious of what we wanted to stand for, but the last 2 years, as our landing page sat live giving us a veil to set our stage as to what we really wanted from Wild Measure, we spent many hours defining ourselves and along the way finding the path we knew was right for us. We also said the moment the client work slowed down, we would focus on our own site. HA! As you entrepreneurs all know, that time never comes. So, this summer in the midst of managing client projects, doing a blog redesign, and working remotely in Michigan, we decided to go for it and finally design the Wild Measure site. Here is a single view of the site, but you really should checkout the site for the full experience.
In the years since first announcing Wild Measure, we have traveled, taken dozens of clients, overworked ourselves, achieved great successes, made mistakes, learned lessons, struggled to find balance, and discovered not only who we are as a business, but who we are as creatives both together and separate. We spent many months being honest with ourselves, with those we love, and listening to those around us. All the time somehow trying to find the words and definition to why we desire to work with those looking to change the world around them and how we do it all. There were moments of insecurity and fear. We said a lot of no’s and were very careful when we said yes. These years, since announcing this chapter, have been both the toughest and the best years of our lives. They have made us all the more confident about launching a site that represents our vision, passion, ideals, and definition of our work.
We have always had the mentality that it is better to begin than to wait for perfection, but during this time we felt we weren’t even sure where to even begin when developing our site. Though we began work on the site 6 months ago, this summer we felt clarity about what had been missing. There were many defining moments in our career over the last 6 months that brought this clarity to us and a feeling of ownership of ourselves as creatives. Ultimately, it all came together as we put together the copy and described ourselves as a company. It wasn’t easy to define ourselves, but now, reading back through the site, we feel proud of it because of the journey and hard work it took to arrive in this moment.
Image by: Michael Newsted
When we set out, we knew the client we desired, we knew the type of work we wanted to do, but everything else was yet to be defined. So, the quiet landing page, which can be created by renowned landing page services, that has said we were “adventurously creating” wasn’t a false statement as we were chasing our passion in order to define who we are as creatives. We learned lessons about how we work together as a creative couple asking the best of each other and themselves, but most importantly we learned how it all aligns as Mike and Megan Gilger of Wild Measure and The Fresh Exchange. We asked deep questions about whether we should drop one of the two business names. We accepted our faults and moved closer to our strengths. We let go of the reigns so the other could help with responsibilities. We learned that we can’t do it all and we learned we aren’t the right fit for everyone and that we shouldn’t be. We plan to share a more extensive post in the new year about what it means to work together as two creatives who are married. So, stay tuned for that!
Now, maybe you are looking at the site thinking, “Wait, where is their work?” We think that is a great question.
There are many layers as to why we have decided not to place our work on our site. We are very proud of the work we have created over these last few years, but what we want future clients and brands we work with to know, is that their story, style, experience, and vision are not our past clients’. Their’s will be their’s, and we know the right client and brand will know we are right by what Wild Measure represents, not by our perfect kerning, color selection, or our eye for user experience. We want to be defined by our vision more than our logos or websites as we believe that is where our best work comes from. If a client is interested enough we will show them many of the finished brand builds and brand experiences we have executed without hesitancy. Though we consider ourselves designers, art directors, and creatives we do not feel our work defines our potential. We do not plan to place pride in accolades or awards because we feel that muddles the waters of our ability to create honest work for our clients. This feeling and concept has been with us since the beginning. The work we do is visible everyday on our blog, instagrams, and social channels. Our website is the deeper side to our story. It is the look behind the curtain of our work and into our vision as a business.
This journey has been amazing thus far. It has included serious trials, late nights, deep questions, moments of serious humility, or a feeling of misdirection, but all of that is part of the story of what has brought us to now. We are very excited to share and celebrate this milestone with all of you. We know you have waited patiently for us to launch the new site and maybe it seems anti-climatic, but for us it feels like a very big accomplishment.
So check it out and make sure to follow Wild Measure on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to keep up with our work and days in the office or new brand projects. We plan to be sharing more into the new year.
