Be arrogant and only then you can get a nomination

First thought: you have to be bold!

When we started thinking about re-branding Angry Ventures, one of the first things we said was: "this new website must be incredibly different".

By then, we were trying to escape that gray zone where every institutional website falls, resembling something that we previously saw somewhere. In my opinion, most websites happen to be

In my opinion, most websites happen to be very similar, because of two main reasons:

1) companies often use templates to build their websites. Let’s be honest: we are WordPress fans and we are amazed by what we can do with it. Despite, websites are no longer handcrafted to fully meet special requirements, both visually and functionality wise;

2) when companies benchmark, they base their design on their competitor’s website, which is based on other competitors’ website. Doing so, we all contribute to the creation of a cycle, where innovation is very scarce.

If you look for a specific niche, you’ll see that websites and structures are usually very similar. We wanted to break that cycle and so we started looking for different, unprecedented, special approaches.

While the challenge seemed to be creating itself, we became cockier by wanting to people react to our new website with something we called the “wow-effect”. Well, but there nothing new in that. We all want to amaze people with our work.

But here’s something we never told anyone: in the very beginning, we used to call our new website “Project Awwwards”. Yes, it was a joke, but unconsciously it also worked as a motivation.

If we were being arrogant to the point where we call our test subdomain awwwards.angryventures.com, then we better bring our A-Game to the table to prove we aren’t wrong.

Second thought: now you can be arrogant.

Analyzing what happened, I can now conclude that being cocky helped us setting the bar higher. With a common goal, we committed even and created something special. We also trusted that everyone would make their best and felt that we couldn’t make it out that specific team member.

That overall combination of circumstances ended up working well. In the day after our submission, we got a nomination for Awwwards and other reputed design awards. We are also very grateful for all your feedback!

You can check our nominations here:

• Awwwards : The awards for design, creativity and innovation on the Internet
• CSS Design Awards: website awards and inspiration.
• CSS Winners: web design awards.
• CSS Light: CSS Light Gallery
• CSS Nectar: the nectar of web design.

CSS Awards: website awards & inspiration

PS: Notice that I didn’t mention the deadline. Yes, we established the one we wanted, but it was still challenging because we had a countdown on our website. We still delivered it on time, like we usually do with every project. Yes, we are being arrogant again.