Atto, Belfast
A funny thing happened as we were putting together this week’s series on Irish-born businesses, we kept coming across the same name, Atto. They worked with The Good Little Company, Sugru and two funky little projects we loved, Build-a-Beard and Your Name on Toast.
And wouldnt-cha-knowit, they’re based in Belfast.
So, we fired off a few quick emails to Pete Kerr at Atto to find out a little more – and rather nicely, he answered …
Hi Pete, you describe yourselves as a ‘responsible design partnership’ – what does that mean for you and how does it play out in practice?
Responsible Design is a way of doing business based on one core theory: If we’re genuinely worth trusting, clients will trust us. It’s how we’ve always run our business, but we put it into words in 2009. [Iddictive: here]
Responsible Design makes a massive change to how we do business, but it’s more than worth it. We’re privileged to get to do what we do for a living, and to enjoy long-term relationships with our clients.
Because we focus on making sure we’re treating our clients really well, whether they’re in the room or not, we earn their trust. So when we suggest a change to how they do business, they know it’s not because we’re trying to trick them, but because we genuinely think it’ll help them succeed. So far it’s working. We receive about 95% of our work by word of mouth.
You’ve been actively involved in working with two of the businesses we’ve featured this week, GLC and Sugru, do you have a nose for interesting companies or do they find you?
We came across both GLC and Sugru by chance, but the truth is more complicated. We seem to have a knack for helping our clients return to what they love, and what they care about.
So with both of your examples, while we do all of the design work too, most of our input was actually in helping them imagine how great their companies could be. Very few people start a company thinking “I’m going to run a big evil company that will make lots of money at other peoples’ expense”. Entrepreneurs want to build something great; something for the ages.
So we helped sugru and the GLC imagine what their dream companies would look like, then we helped them build those companies. When you have a focus like that, it’s pretty easy to find an audience that will connect with it.
Atto seems to like ‘friday afternoon projects’, in particular Build-a-Beard and Your Name on Toast. Could you tell us a little about these, where the ideas come from and why they’re important to Atto.
Friday afternoon projects are our (geeky) way of having fun, testing out some theories we have, and usually helping a charity we like. Most of our regular work is on long term projects, but sometimes it’s nice to just build something in a day, set it loose into the world, and watch how it grows.
We’re always talking about new ideas and new ways of working so, if I’m honest, there’s no rhyme or reason as to where the original idea comes from, but by the time it’s launched we’ve thought about:
* Why anyone might care about it
* Why anyone will spread the idea
* What people will say when they talk about it
* What it will achieve for the charity we’ve chosen
Friday afternoon projects are important because they give us a place to test our theories… for example, it’s all very well and good talking about theory behind how ideas spread and what users care about, but this is a chance for us to prove it, with our own time and money… and usually to achieve something worthwhile for something we care about.
Site: helloatto.com
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