We’ve had some recent and existing additions to the projekt202 leadership team. We also have some exciting things on the horizon. It’s a lot of change. And it got me thinking about the origins of the company, and especially the name.
Before I started projekt202 I was studio head for a design firm in Austin, Texas. I witnessed firsthand the failure to connect the business and technology functions to their customers. There was a set procedure around how to go about engagements with customers. A procedure that tended to leave the most important party, the customer, out of the equation entirely. It was analytic and technically “correct,” a process driven by the more left-brained, order, and structure side of things.
Or, things swung too far to the other, right-brain creative thinking side. The idea that the creation is the most important aspect of a product rather than the problems that need to be solved. And there seemed to be a fight between the two with one winning out over the other or vice versa.
Growing up in Germany as the son of an engineer and studying formally design, I realized that the intersection between those two worlds was what was lacking. One side was inevitably trying to control the other side. I felt that there had to be a way to make these two sides get along and respect each other.
It was that thinking that led me to projekt202. projekt202’s premise from day one was if we are not addressing the root causes of real problems for real people then run the risk of creating something that will inevitably fail. The four founding members of the company were committed to not allowing ego to sneak in and turn us into just another agency.
We declared at that time that we will never reach a state of completeness—that we need to be ever-evolving just like the world around us. At the start, it felt like we might be a never-ending project. A project that puts people front and center, both internally and externally.
We declared at that time that we will never reach a state of completeness—that we need to be ever-evolving just like the world around us. At the start, it felt like we might be a never-ending project. A project that puts people front and center, both internally and externally.
We insisted that we needed to better understand human behavior in order to better design and innovate. But the market wasn’t ready. At the time, the world was listening too much to technologists and creating things just because they could, not because they solved any real challenges.
After a few philosophical rounds, we decided that we will call ourselves project. My American friends insisted that we needed some homage to the larger German design heritage and convinced me that the logo mark should use the German version of the word project, which is of course projekt with a k. So, projekt202 was born, and the easy part was over. It was time to get to work.
First, we established a methodology framework that would help us control the creative process so that we might connect better with the companies that would hire us. Our folks weren’t allowed to make stuff up—every design and technical decision had to have a practical reason behind it, based on evidence and real insights. Through the years we’ve grown organically and through acquisitions to be the company we are today.
Through it all, our ideal of who we are and what we want to be hasn’t changed. Everything we do is a projekt. Every step we take into the future is an evolution of that original idea. Every problem solved is done in a way that impacts real people in real ways.
We’ve had some exciting changes to the internal structure of our organization lately. With each change we get closer to that ideal—that we can change the world to be a better place, even if it is sometimes one pixel, one code snippet, one word, one education session, or one project at a time.
