Gravitywell 2019: What we did
Another absolute rollercoaster of a year is hurtling to an end. Phew!
It seems like tech companies are in the news for all the wrong reasons these days, and this year’s bête noire was Huawei as the Chinese behemoth was placed on the ‘entity list’ by the Trump administration, limiting its US trading potential — although Donald’s year hasn’t ended too peachy either.
Scientists lost their mind over the first ever image of a black hole (into which Theresa May’s premiership duly followed), and Royalists got overly excited at the birth of a baby boy, who may or may not have been named after an Eastenders villain played by Larry Lamb.
Hugo and Laura mourned the passing of fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld, then calmly explained to the devs that ‘runway’ isn’t always a piece of tarmac next to the airport.
Avengers: Endgame became the highest-grossing film of all time, crushing previous box office records with an opening weekend of $1.2b — yet Gravitywell’s ‘Poolside pump’ was the critics choice for 2019, with Mark Kermode describing Henry’s big screen debut as ‘mesmerising’.
But while big wheel kept on turning, and proud Mary (or planet Earth?) kept on burning, we cracked on with some incredible projects. Here’s a roundup of what we did this year.
Launched our new website
When better to refresh than the springtime? We launched our gorgeous new Gatsby-built website in May, to better define our offering as an agency. Lead Designer Matt explains:
‘We’re not just a tech agency, we’re not a design agency, we also do film, photography, branding, strategy, startups, marketing and more… We needed the new website to communicate all this.’
Built an award-winning heritage map
Gravitywell was presented with a fabulous opportunity to work with English Heritage and the artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins on an interactive illustrated map of English myths and legends, for a national marketing campaign. As well as receiving a great reaction from the public, the map scooped the award for ‘Best Digital Design’ at the SPARKies 2019, and CSS Design Awards’ Website of the Day. Legend-ary.
Developed a leadership training app
We were asked by leadership training experts Strategic Leadership to help provide an app for a 3 year programme with BMW. The process included scoping workshops, wireframe sessions and technical calls, and the new web-app allows educators to steer away from printed documents, putting participants firmly in the digital driving seat. (Better puns are available.)
Created a pet-themed machine learning tool
It wouldn’t be an annual Gravitywell roundup if we didn’t mention our hackathon, and this year certainly didn’t disappoint. Our base for the week was an idyllic farmhouse tucked away in the Andalusian hills, where — in collaboration with Found, an exciting Bristol-based startup — we researched and developed a machine learning model to reunite owners with their lost pets.
It was a week filled with wonderful food and drink (local lager, specifically), hard work (we’re still recovering from those Granada mounta- hills), and lots of laughs (primarily at Henry and Hugo’s expense). Buenos recuerdos.
Continued our budding relationship with a Bristol icon
We’ve been working with We the Curious now for over 5 years. Our work this year focused on furthering their forward-thinking approach to opening up their tools and systems to work in the long-term. The next time you’re browsing the science and art centre’s pioneering exhibits, think about what really makes it so engaging. You know, those sexy APIs and stuff.
Set up our own food industry startup
Surely our most exciting news of the year — and we’ll be talking about it a lot more in 2020 — we’re excited to announce the release of our own revolutionary SaaS product Mezze, a new platform designed specifically for the food manufacturing industry. With powerful ordering and self-serve features, users can remove the Customer Service burden and provide a better experience for their customers. Delicious.
