DashDigital is a Cape City-based digital design studio. We work throughout technique, branding, digital design, and expertise, with a staff of eight unfold between South Africa and Europe.
We’re research-driven and strategy-led. Earlier than something will get made, we have to perceive what we’re fixing and who we’re fixing it for. That considering shapes every little thing that follows.
Our shoppers come from a whole lot of completely different areas: artwork galleries, movie & media, monetary establishments, artistic studios. Working throughout that vary is a deliberate alternative. Completely different industries carry completely different issues, and the best way you resolve one has a behavior of exhibiting up in one other. There’s a whole lot of cross-pollination and it retains the considering from getting comfy.
Our Journey
DashDigital began as a product design studio. 4 co-founders with a plan to construct issues and get them into market rapidly. The primary main venture was constructing a competitor to Uber. After we completed it, our CTO determined he needed to step away from tech completely. That in itself was not the problem. The issue was that our improvement staff was based mostly in Jap Europe and he was the one one who may talk with them. When he left, that entire setup went with him.
That left us with a enterprise that now not had the foundations it was constructed on. So we did what made sense: stripped again to what we may really ship and rebuilt round design. It was not a long-term technique. It was a pivot born out of necessity, and one which turned out to work properly for us. A couple of years later, because the studio grew, we introduced improvement again in and constructed that functionality correctly into the staff, creating the studio that DashDigital is at this time.
Our Initiatives
Goodman Gallery
Goodman Gallery is without doubt one of the world’s main worldwide up to date artwork galleries, with areas in Johannesburg, Cape City, London, and New York.
The Challenge
The venture didn’t begin as an e-commerce construct. Halfway by means of, it turned clear that the artwork world was shifting and that galleries wanted to maneuver with it or danger falling behind. We stopped, stepped again, and requested a more durable query: what does promoting artwork on-line really have to seem like, and why has no person completed it correctly but? The reply to that final half turned apparent rapidly. The issue is genuinely complicated, and most galleries had both prevented it or underestimated it.
Challenges
From the skin, the web site seems thought-about and calm. What sits beneath it is without doubt one of the most complicated builds we’ve taken on. Goodman wanted a totally customized e-commerce system; nothing obtainable off-the-shelf got here near dealing with what the venture required. Person accounts wanted to accommodate people, companies, and trusts. Paintings ships the world over, which meant constructing a system that might observe each piece within the backend, establish its origin and vacation spot, calculate relevant taxes per nation, and floor correct prices to the person in actual time in a number of currencies. For works exceeding $10,000, KYC verification wanted to be constructed instantly into the checkout move. Delivery for multi-million greenback items added one other layer completely, with completely different suppliers required relying on the dimensions, weight, and nature of the work, all decided mechanically whereas the person is shopping.
Achievements
Goodman Gallery is now one of many solely worldwide artwork galleries on the planet providing end-to-end e-commerce for paintings at any worth level. A purchase order value thousands and thousands will be accomplished completely on-line, with no handbook intervention. First of its variety globally on this worth bracket.
Gavin Schneider Productions
Gavin Schneider Productions is a Cape City-based manufacturing firm creating high-end industrial and movie work for international manufacturers.
The Challenge
The prevailing website was doing the work a disservice. Outdated, tough to handle, and missing any design intention, it was not a good illustration of what GSP was producing. Earlier than touching the web site, we did a model enhancement to ensure there was one thing strong to construct on. From there, the path turned easy: keep clear, let the work lead, and make sensible choices that add to the expertise with out competing with it. We needed it to really feel editorial, giving customers a number of methods to discover various kinds of work and get a way of what goes into making it.
What was constructed is type-driven, clear, and intuitive. The CMS was rebuilt from the bottom up and on the technical facet, the location carries a whole lot of high-resolution video and enormous format imagery, so efficiency needed to be inbuilt from the beginning somewhat than handled as an afterthought. A contemporary codebase, CDN distribution, adaptive video supply, and trendy picture codecs hold every little thing quick with out compromising the visible high quality of the work being proven.
Achievements
Awwwards Web site of the Day, Awwwards Developer Award, FWA of the Day.
Freshman
Freshman is a artistic manufacturing firm that groups up with companies and types that search to defy the odd.
The Challenge
Freshman got here to us wanting a model and digital expertise that felt genuinely completely different. Not trend-driven, however culturally linked in a means that may maintain up. The transient pushed us creatively from the beginning.
We constructed the model identification first, designing a flexible system with sufficient vary to hold throughout each touchpoint. A number of typefaces, daring typography, hand-drawn scribbles, graphics, and robust color all working collectively to create one thing with actual character. The web site turned an extension of that system somewhat than a separate train, carrying the identical power by means of into the digital expertise.
Achievements
Awwwards Web site of the Day, Awwwards Developer Award, FWA of the Day.
LO2S
Based mostly in Dubai, Lo2s creates boundary-pushing experiences that fuse gentle, sound and movement into moments of pure sensory affect, from large stage productions to intimate model worlds.
The Challenge
The transient was about power. Lo2s needed a model and digital expertise that felt alive, not static. One thing that moved and breathed the best way their stay reveals do. The design wanted to be fast-paced and edgy, with layouts that carry the identical depth as being within the room for one in all their performances.
We led with model identification first, constructing a system that felt natural and in movement somewhat than mounted. That very same power translated instantly into the web site, the place the main focus was on presenting work at its highest high quality: full-screen video, high-resolution imagery, immersive layouts. Each design choice was made with one objective in thoughts: making a person really feel one thing near the stay expertise, simply by means of a display.
Achievements
Awwwards Web site of the Day, Awwwards Developer Award, FWA of the Day.
Studio PIC
Companions in Crime is a Cape City-based animation and design studio working with a number of the world’s most recognised manufacturers: Gucci, Google, IBM, Adobe, Dyson, Ralph Lauren.
The Challenge
Designing for a design studio is a unique type of transient. Companions in Crime know precisely what beauty like. Their complete enterprise is making issues transfer and really feel extraordinary, so the web site couldn’t simply current that work, it needed to mirror it.
We began with a model refresh earlier than transferring into design and improvement, giving the location a cleaner, extra thought-about basis to construct on. The design path was minimal and restrained, holding the deal with the work itself. Movement, easing, and interplay have been the precedence all through. Not as ornament, however as one thing that wanted to earn its place. For a studio whose craft is animation and CGI, each element needed to be there for a cause.
Achievements
Awwwards Web site of the Day, Awwwards Developer Award, FWA of the Day, CSS Design Awards Web site of the Day
Tradition and Workforce
Eight individuals who care about what they make and care about one another. That mixture is more durable to search out than it sounds, and it’s what makes the studio work.
Everybody stays near the work from begin to end. Initiatives don’t get siloed or handed off and forgotten. The identical considering that begins one thing tends to be what sees it by means of.
The Cape City studio is the type of place folks really wish to be in. The staff reveals up many of the week not as a result of they must however as a result of being in the identical room tends to provide higher work. Distant staff members throughout South Africa and Europe are simply as embedded in how issues run.
Design is a continuing dialog right here, not one thing that begins and stops with a short. New work will get observed, attention-grabbing choices get picked aside, and we take studying critically by means of de-briefs, weekly classes, and wherever curiosity takes us exterior of consumer work.
