Archive, 2018 to 2020
The archive: smaller builds that taught us the trade
Before the marketplaces and member platforms there were photographers who needed their work to load quickly, a gaming community looking for its first members, and three engineering students answering hosting support calls at two in the morning. These are the small projects where our habits were formed. Several sites have changed since; the screenshots show them as we left them.
Gamerly
gamerly.io
A pre-launch home for a social network that had to speak to esports players and chess and word game fans in the same breath. A gamer persona quiz, pre-registration and an ambassador programme did the recruiting before the product existed.
Superlative Gaming
superlativegaming.in
A brand and hiring site for an Indian game studio: a one page introduction to its idea of game science and a careers route for designers and developers. Our co-founder Prem Raval had worked there in brand and market research, one of several early clients who first knew us as colleagues.
Shirish Photography
shirishphotography.com
A showreel for a commercial photographer shooting since 2013 across advertising, fashion, lifestyle and interiors. Genre filters get art buyers to their category fast, and the contact button opens WhatsApp, because that is how his clients prefer to book. The footer still carries the Design & Code credit.
Rushiraj Shah Photography
A fashion, bridal and product photographer's portfolio with no banner and no sales copy. The gallery starts at the top of the page and a quiet header stays out of the way, so an art director sees his full range in a single scroll.
Vedhika Kumar
vedhikakumar.in
An official home for a pan Indian actress from Mumbai, built for two audiences. Fans head for the gallery and red carpet pages, while casting directors and press find the résumé, the awards and one clear way to get in touch.
Blind Handicap Social
A website for a Mumbai organisation supporting blind citizens, with three plain paths: donate, get involved, volunteer. It was delivered with, and credited to, our community partner Enroot Mumbai. It also taught us a lesson we now apply everywhere: a site for blind visitors must work with a screen reader first and look good second.
Prem Raval
Our co-founder's own site: skills, academic work, roles at IVCA, GoDaddy Academy and Superlative Gaming, and a list of achievements that opens with the Smart India Hackathon 2019. Several organisations on it later became clients. Meet Prem and the other founders.
Atharva Hackathon 2019
hackathon.designandcode.tech
Before the company, the community. As the Design & Code student community at Atharva College of Engineering, we ran a 24 hour hackathon on 15 and 16 March 2019, with prizes worth over ₹4 lakh, and built its identity, microsite, registrations and schedule ourselves. Its themes were education, AI in daily life and augmented reality. We still work on all three.
Hosting Seva
Where it all started. In October 2018 three engineering students priced their own hosting bills, then launched plain-spoken hosting for small Indian businesses from ₹49 a month, with the founders answering support themselves. It broke even in six months and passed 100 clients, and it taught us what happens to a website after launch day.
SEO Seva
When India locked down in March 2020, small businesses suddenly needed to be found online, and our hosting clients kept asking for help with search. We set up SEO Seva as its own practice in the first week of April, while the country stayed at home. That work now lives in our growth and digital marketing capability.
These are historical screenshots, shown as each site looked when we last worked on it in 2019 or 2020. Businesses move on, and several of these sites have since been changed or retired by their owners. Some were built on licensed themes that we set up and adapted, so we show them for the brief they answered rather than as original visual design. Photographs belong to the photographers and the people in them.
Small brief? We still take them.
Several of our longest partnerships began with a single page. Tell us what you have in mind and a partner will reply within one working day.