EYE ON DESIGN STUDIO INTERVIEW
peers is key to success, and Engage has spent the
last 18 months looking at what sets them apart from
other studios. “We set ourselves the task of trying to
extract and define what it is that makes us stand out
in an increasingly saturated digital landscape,” says
Wilcocks. “We asked questions internally across the
team and also externally to our clients – an exercise
culminating in some really interesting insights and a
lot of Post-Its stuck on walls! Slowly though, a
common theme started to emerge – the attention to
detail we strive to apply to everything we produce.
This characteristic really resonated with the whole
team and was even cited as one of the primary
drivers for people having applied to work here. The
more we mulled it over, the more we agreed that
continually striving to exceed expectations in
everything we do is a value that defines us and one
we collectively take huge pride in.”
As Engage has grown, the way that it works with
its clients has massively developed too. It has
morphed into a full-service agency and, as such, the
team is often deeply involved in projects and
campaigns at a strategy level, quite often finding
themselves writing briefs for clients rather than theother way around. “One of our biggest strengths is
our ability to translate and represent brands across
digital, while still retaining a balance between brand
immersion and usability,” concurs Schofield. “We
don’t like to compromise, so you’ll never see us
using templates or off-the-shelf solutions,
everything we produce is bespoke.”
And this is where creativity comes into play, an
area in which Engage excels. Photoshop plays a
huge role in the process of building projects, says
Schofield: “In short, Photoshop is the single most
valuable piece of software we use. Not only because
of its across-the-board use, but also because of
Adobe’s domination of the market.”
Working with so many creative assets in the
studio, from shooting and retouching food
photography all the way to animating vector-based
cartoon characters, Photoshop covers all the bases
and brings the whole process together. “For a pure
digital agency, where optimisation and page speed is
vital (especially with the mobile age), the web-
centred setup fits seamlessly into our workflow.”
They do, of course, use specialist software in
other areas where it is needed. For example, MarvelDesigned for inspiration:considered physical surroundings making “We’ve always
a difference to the way we think”ASOS:solution for its fresh-off-the-catwalk Technology Ventures platform The team worked with ASOS to design and build a brand-newProject teams: “Being in a single, open-plan
if we’re split into smaller agile project teams”space helps us gel together as a team, even