Back in 1998 a technology company was founded that has gone on to transform the digital world becoming one of the planet’s most successful businesses with a brand name so famous it’s become a verb.
But that’s enough about Google.
bd2 was also founded in 1998 and whilst we haven’t become a trillion dollar behemoth, we have delivered hundreds of creative and digital projects that we’re really proud of - brands, websites and marketing materials that have added real value to the clients we’ve worked with helping them to grow their businesses.
To mark the moment, which seems quite significant, we’ve put together a retrospective with a selection of some of the work we’ve delivered over the last 25 years. Featured below are just a few random highlights from the book which we're sending out to some of the businesses and organisations we’ve worked with, and the friends we’ve made on the journey, combined with a huge thank you to all of them.
It feels like Google has been around forever, so to have started up in the same year that they did makes me feel like something of a digital pioneer or at least an early adopter. It also makes me feel quite old of course. In truth my journey into digital started before then as I could see that the future, from a design perspective at least, was very much going to be about what we now call Ui and Ux - user interface and user experience design. Having trained classically in graphic design and then started a business straight out of Uni in 1991, I could see the opportunities in design for screen as the internet exploded, but my world was very much about brands and brand communication in media such as print, packaging, point of sale, adverts, large format, exhibitions and so on.
My route into digital came by way of a client whose brand I was working on, who then approached me to buy out my little design company and become their design director. They had built a software product for retail which was being used in travel, cinema and retail to deliver dynamic content via screens. For example, UCI and Odeon cinemas started to use it for showtime information and promotions, and Coop Travel were putting holidays onto screens instead of cards in their stores. It was a real baptism of fire in all senses - technology and in business. I headed up the design team to support the product, so had a steep learning curve in terms of design for screen, and the business had big ambitions with venture capital investors so it was an equally rapid education from that perspective too! But it was very exciting being involved in something that, at the time, was very 'leading edge', talking to clients like Harrods who wanted to use the system on the amazing new plasma screens that had just come out and were only 4 inches thick, instead of in-store posters.
To cut a very long and somewhat painful story short, the business was restructured and I took the design team and launched bd2 with a partnership agreement with a new software business. The knowledge and experienced we gained from having been in a software development environment back in the mid nineties served us well, as did the principle of partnering with technology businesses which we continue to do to this day.
One of the first being Datel, the UK's largest Sage partner, who we still work with. One of our first projects with them back in 98 was designing the Ui for an online procurement system for Yokohama Tyres - we didn't even call them websites back then.
Our work was a mix of digital and conventional design work such as brand guidelines for Warner Village and brochureware for Image Ceramics and architects Anthony Grimshaw Associates as well as marketing materials and POS for Biojet a manufacturer of jacuzzis. In terms of digital we designed and produced a multimedia presentation for JJB Sports who had just become a PLC and wanted to wow the city with their first set of accounts, and an intranet for ICL who later became part of Fujitsu,
One of the companies in the Datel Group, Datel Protex, specialised in clothing and apparel which has become a key sector for us. It's fair to say we started at the top with a project for Burberry to design the Ui for a new system, developed by Protex, which allowed them to manage and track orders from their suppliers online.
Our first totally in-house ecommerce project was for retailer American Golf Discount. Back in 2002 there weren't really any 'off-the-shelf' systems like Magento or Shopify so we built this ground up - in classic 'ASP' for any techie readers. The site, which was their first foray into ecommerce, quickly became a top ten turnover store and we supported it for several years, including developing a highly successful and award winning online game as part of a viral marketing campaign. The selection of work from 2002 still shows that mix of design for print and for screen with literature for Milliken Group - a big client for us back then - and corporate website for Red Squared PLC.
We've worked with The Senator Group, the UK's largest office furniture manufacturer for around twenty years building numerous websites. This was an early project for Allermuir, a hospitality brand they acquired, and another project to build a product site for the Sprint chair launch. 2005 was a busy year with a rebrand of The University of Bolton, corporate website for Lex Group, ongoing work for Milliken and our first B2B ecommerce website for Ralawise which became another longstanding client as we helped them grow their online business from this starting point to ultimately achieve sales of over £100M annually.
We built a completely bespoke white label solution for Company Shop, an interesting business which runs staff shops for numerous brands as well as their own retail outlets selling surplus stock. The staff shops were usually on site and sold heavily discounted product to workers at that site, however if you make baked beans they probably have a limited appeal. By moving to an online staff shop, it allowed Company Shop to offer all products to all staff within an organisation, including head office. It also allowed Company Shop to distribute the products giving them easier access to the surpluses for their own stores. The system was adopted by Nestle, Heinz, Mars and Arla.
Another completely bespoke solution and another project in partnership with Datel integrating with the client's Sage ERP. The client, Bunzl, wanted a system to manage the procurement process for their customer, John Lewis, on their suppliers, from quote requests through to fulfillment.
We had become approved suppliers to Hewlett Packard a few years earlier, working on numerous projects within their MoD account, when the VP moved to the Ericsson account over in Stockholm. Fortunately he took us with him and we had the pleasure of designing a staff handbook which led to several equally pleasurable trips to Sweden. As well as more projects for Milliken, we produced several pieces for Vernacare, websites for Exedy and Premier Workwear and we donated our services to new local charity Joining Jack to provide the brand and website, Bradley Wiggins became one of their ambassadors.
Our work for Hewlett Packard expanded onto their DevOps team up in Newcastle who were building the Universal Credit platform for the DWP. We were commissioned to market the capability to other divisions of HP, other government departments and then broader commercial operations. It was a fantastic experience for us being in their team of 2000 technicians as it gave us our first insight into Agile within a world class organisation allowing us to bring many insights back into our own processes.
When the high-end jewelers Boodles approached Datel, their ERP solution providers, with a very specific request we were introduced as a partner who could design and build it. Boodles have many one-off items that can obviously only be in one place at once so they wanted a tablet based system that could present all of them in any of their 14 stores. So we built Silk, a visual catalogue of their entire repository integrated with Sage, which expanded into a full EPOS system for all sales.
When the pandemic hit and lockdowns were put in place, all offices were obviously shut. For office furniture manufacturers Senator the implications were obviously dire. We built a B2C ecommerce site for them, based on an Allermuir at Home brand, in just a few weeks as they tried to pivot towards consumers.
As the restrictions lifted, we then helped The Senator Group devise a new digital strategy building elements within it such as a new corporate site for content that previously had been undervalued, new brand sites for Senator, Allermuir and Torasen.
A key part of the new strategy is a new repository for all digital assets called The Portal, which launched internally earlier this year with a full roll out imminent. The Portal provides all digital assets for download - product images, lifestyle photography, CAD blocks, Revits, Sketchups and more - as well as a product configurator, ecommerce function for sample ordering, along with brochures and catalogues. Access is permission based, so some users such as sales and dealers can access all assets, while others, for example architects, can't download commercially sensitive files such as price lists. The system allows Senator to monitor downloads providing valuable business intelligence.
This is just a flavour of our work over the last 25 years, a copy of the book is available on request just email me at will@bd2.co.uk.