Sweet Sixteen

Gather round and grab your party hats because we’re celebrating our sweet sixteen. No, we’re not talking about a teenager getting their driver’s license or throwing an epic birthday bash—although there might be some cake involved. We’re here to salute our hard work and team, a web design studio that has been making the online world a more beautiful place for a whopping 16 years!

That’s right, 16 years of transforming ideas into reality and taking countless new products to market, evolving stagnant identities, refreshing websites, and ensuring every brand we touch gets a serious glow-up. Fhoke has been on a journey from the days when the iPhone was a shiny new thing to today’s world, where AI can write you a few analogies about design studios. Oh, wait…

That’s why turning 16 is such a big deal. We’ve survived and thrived in the ever-changing design and economic world. From a financial crash in 2008 to COVID-19 to the impacts of war and elections on the economy, we’re still here. So here’s to more successful years, and if we do say so ourselves—we’re looking better than ever!

New location

COVID, it feels like a lifetime ago. While it was a stressful time, and we found ourselves running a remote studio for big chunks, it fast-tracked our plans to create a more remote working environment. Most of the team now work a 60/40 split from home, with at least one to two days where we’ll all get together in the Salisbury studio and focus on the problem-solving tasks of a project that are easier face-to-face.

It also gave us a kick-up of the backside to think about the client work we want. We were inundated at the time with people realising they needed a new site; as things got back to normal, we’ve knuckled down and looked at how we drum up new business. From day one, we’ve lived from one project to another, and it continues to work, but sometimes, the older we get in this game, the less stress we need in our lives worrying about new business. It’s taken time, but in the past 24 months since our 14th birthday, we decided to create a base for our clients with a new London office. We attract a lot of business from the city, so while we can use a base there for our meetings, it’s also a bit of an SEO signal to Google to say, “Hey, we’re here too!” And it’s worked. Within a couple of weeks of the new address, a new SEO strategy for London and our refocused services offering, we were inundated with leads from the successful Shopify launch of Garland Powersports to working on the re-launch of the prestigious public school Bryanston.

So, if you’re in London and want to arrange a meeting, then book an introductory call with Ben, and we’ll sort something out.

Expanding our services

Sixteen years ago, we focused on delivering design-only services to other agencies, from branding to planning and designing flat visuals they could use to build their clients’ websites. We also leant on these smaller studios and freelancers for our builds. We took all that in-house eight years later, grew our team to four, then five, and never really looked back. We’ve dabbled with bigger teams since eight years ago, but Brett and Ben, our founders, don’t have the vision of becoming a behemoth of an agency. They’ve realised that being agile, friendly, and a kick-ass team is all that matters. It’s way more fun. While also creating an environment we’re all happy in. Seb, Grant and Kasia have been here for nine, eight, and seven years, respectively; that’s some longevity and a depth of experience across the team.

While the team might not be growing at an exponential rate, last year, we looked at growing our base services beyond WordPress and Shopify websites. Seb expressed a passion for Laravel, opening new doors to bigger and more complicated projects. From developing made-to-measure apps for Shopify to a photographer portal to an AI assistant, the past 12 months have been an exciting change from the norm. And because the websites we develop today are becoming increasingly complicated, having this extra string to our bow will only benefit those we’re working with; it also keeps that big brain of Seb’s ticking over.

Award-winning

The numbers don’t lie. Since day one, we’ve been award-winning. Over 120 awards to date. That’s an uplift from 65 awards three years ago. Impressive when you look back. And the reason why? Our team. The benefit of staying agile is we all work on a project, and everyone in the studio will have a hand in something. From a process to how common project elements are coded to the unique design and build. Everyone is at the very core of the agency, and we all strive to deliver award-winning sites for B2B companies to beer brands and classic car restorers.

Cheers to that

Since 2008, we’ve created websites and brands for over 900 companies—that’s just crazy when you think about it. Each one successfully makes those brands more attractive to their customers and gives owners and employees an identity they can be proud to be a part of. We often hear marketing teams and founders being embarrassed to direct potential clients to their websites for fear of not being taken seriously, even though their services are some of the best in their sector. That’s where we step in.

We realise a company’s reputation is built on how a team identifies as a business, acts or behaves with a client, and performs when providing a service or product. We help those brands to portray this by creating a consistent visual identity across their digital products. Sometimes, it’s not all about a jazzy identity (although they are fun projects); sometimes, we play it safe, creating a strong and trustworthy look and feel that works.

Here’s a quick glimpse of our proudest moments from the past 12 months.

Paris Tile

Rooted in the rich cultural tapestry of France and Morocco, Paris Tile is a new brand that blends traditional tile manufacturing with artisanal storytelling. We embarked on a journey with Paris Tile to realise a new brand identity that resonates with its core values and heritage. Understanding the significance of the Eiffel Tower in Parisian culture and its global iconography, Fhoke ingeniously integrated its footprint into Paris Tile’s brand icon. While the website for Paris Tile was designed to blend tradition with modernity. The design is fresh and uncluttered, reflecting the high-quality products on sale.

Garland Motorsports

Garland Powersports is not your average motocross gear shop. It’s backed by a founder who has ridden for over 20 years in MX. The design of the website is nothing short of a motocross enthusiast’s dream. The combination of large, dynamic images, the electric green colour scheme, and bold fonts were chosen to convey the brand’s values, energy, and commitment to providing top-quality motocross gear. Offering an exciting shopping experience fueled by a bold brand and a user-friendly Shopify store, the success of Garland Powersports is a testament to the power of a strong brand identity and a well-designed online platform.

Klindworth Roofing

Sixteen years in design, it’s not uncommon for most of our clients to return two, three, five or even ten years later for a redesign. That’s precisely what happened at the start of 2024 with Klindworth Roofing. Offering a wide range of expert roofing services dedicated to exceptional workmanship and customer satisfaction, they’ve earned the title of the best roofing company in Texas since we began working with them in 2020. So, 2024 was the year a new site should reflect that. With a stand-out brand recognised regionally (which we created, by the way), the new website backs up everything they do, from promoting the brand online to showcasing the company’s exceptional work. The entire project has been one of Fhoke’s most successful stories where the client trusted us throughout to deliver on our original promise. The site also won Website of the Day with CSS Design Awards alongside numerous other accolades.

Here’s to the next year

As we blow out the candles on this sweet sixteen, we’re proud to reflect on where we’ve been, especially the support the team has given each other, the studio, and our clients in the past 12 months. Running a web design agency isn’t always easy; our industry has ever-changing challenges, but having that close-knit team makes the day-to-day easier.

We’re excited to see where we end up in 2025 and hope for an even bigger 12 months for everyone.

If you want to share your goals and ambitions for the next year, contact the team and let us know your plans.