In this edition of Best in WordPress Design, we chat with Rocío and Santos from Paseo Studio, a brand and digital product studio based in Madrid, Spain.
The name ‘Paseo‘ (walk, in Spanish) comes from the idea of clients and designers being able to walk side-by-side to build effective and relevant brands and digital products.
Santos
Where did the inspiration for this site design come from?
It comes from the idea of cataloging, just like they used to do in libraries with their filing drawers that organized the cards by alphabetical order. A portfolio is also a compendium of projects. What is interesting is trying to find different ways we can organize to meet the needs of the users who browse our website.
What was the most challenging part of coming up with this design?
For a studio that designs digital products, just imagine what making your own website means. It’s nuts! Balancing our day-to-day work with our own website was the greatest challenge for us.
Paseo’s website was a long-term project. We normally spend our Fridays thinking and designing both in-house projects and communication tasks. Paseo’s website took up many of our Fridays for a year.
We have learned from experience that getting everything done is a huge task, so we dosed our efforts. After a year, we had gone through two different versions and expansions, adding the pages we were missing: first, Projects, Approach, and Studio, and lastly, Index. We are especially proud of Index, because you can see all the projects we have worked on throughout almost 5 years of experience at a glance.
Technically, the greatest challenge was the transitions between pages. It was difficult for us to bring this idea into development, since the pre-loading content was at odds with the agility in interaction we sought. After many trials, we finally achieved the fluidity we wanted. We are very pleased with the end result.
Tell us a bit about your tools and your work process.
In terms of our daily design and development tools, Figma and WordPress take first place. We find both of them to be comfortable and effective and they provide our projects with the agility they need. To communicate in-house and with our network of collaborators (and there are many of them), we use Discord. We think it is much more practical than the never-ending chains of emails we were using before, and it makes communication much more fluid. When the workday is over, Discord is turned off for everyone. This lets us rest, which is highly important to reset and start the next day the best way possible.
Our work process is improving every day. On the Approach page on our site, we provide a summary of the methodology we apply to every project that makes its way to our studio. We feel comfortable dividing tasks into phases. They are very clear to the client and mirror the spirit of collaborative work we have at Paseo.
Design-wise, what are you most satisfied with on this site?
Being able to organize and shape our work process, definitely. This was a task that began long before we started thinking about the new site (before, we had a landing site with almost no information), when we were preparing our presentation portfolio for clients. Our goal of having a “complete” website was the trigger for a more in-depth analysis of ourselves: the way we work, who we seek to address, and which kinds of projects we are most effective with.
Do you work remotely from home, or do you go somewhere else to work?
Our work is hybrid, between the studio and our homes. During summer and Christmas and Easter, we go fully remote. Santos lives in Paris, so he is 100% remote, regularly travelling to Madrid so we can all work together. Working from home helped us all at a certain point in our lives and allowed us to connect with clients outside our city and country. However, we also feel the need to work together in the same place. It is important to see each other and share space. We are also lucky enough to be in a beautiful studio full of natural light. Sometimes too much light!
Why did you pick WordPress to build the site?
Most of the websites we design at Paseo are developed with WordPress. When we made the decision to develop our own webpage, we chose WordPress for many different reasons. In terms of design, we can use the ideas that work for us by developing a customized theme with its own functions. The agility of the content manager adapts to our needs as far as editing and updating content are concerned. We also care about security and trust the platform’s ongoing revisions.
Many thanks to Rocío and Santos for agreeing to chat with us. Be sure to explore their website and learn more about their work!
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