Dartworks.
Crafting digital products.

We built a powerful website for one of Wellingtons largest and most respected vehicle dealerships.

View the case study

Projects

Meniscus - New Zealand made leather goods

Brendan Foot Supersite

Darroch Forrest Lawyers

Archdiocese of Wellington

Brendan Foot Supersite

Youth Guarantee Profile Builder

Jay Morris psychotherapy

For Us They Fell

Mark Coote Photography

Powershop

Drawing Room

Mount Victoria
Historical Society

Education Payroll

Steven Boniface

Women @ Work

Youth Guarantee

Dollop

The Catholic Institute

Embroids

Taylor Property Plus

RecRadar

Sport and Spine

Auckland Zen Centre

About

Small and agile, the Dartworks core team is Wil McDonald and Ira Ritchie Meek. We manage our projects directly with clients. We can make decisions and give expert advice on the spot. There are no layers of account management here, we move quickly when urgency is required. We use transparent project management tools to keep organised and allow all project members to keep in sync. We leverage all the magic of the internet to streamline our services and systems allowing us to focus on whats most important.

  • Core concepts:

    Research your position

    The start of any project begins with research into where and how your project/business sits in relation to others.

    Design should have longevity

    Identity and Websites are investments - they should last!

    Evaluate and iterate

    Throughout the creative process we learn a lot about the task, we review and iterate at milestone dates utilising this knowledge and feeding it directly back into the project.

    Communicate over reporting

    We believe reports can disengage clients, we prefer to communicate progress, creating a dialogue with clients throughout our projects. This signals issues earlier and keeps everyone on target.

    Beauty is not skin deep

    We firmly believe websites are a tool, and as such they need to perform beautifully, not just look beautiful.

  • Process

    Understand

    There is nothing like a robust chat to build an understanding of a project and its wider context. We like to start all projects with a meeting in person or via skype where questions can be explored from a macro and micro view point.

    Create

    We produce a lot of work. It's our livelihood. We follow a process and we totally commit to deadlines. It's amazing how focused and lateral the mind can become when working inside a tight time frame with a well defined goal to work on. It's all about flow.

    Collaborate

    Our communications and management systems are transparent. It's about planning things out and keeping everyone involved and informed. We're flexible, adjusting our processes to maximise the strengths of our collaborators.

    Grow

    We build tools to achieve future goals, from identity guidelines to extendable server-site software. Strategically thinking beyond todays immediate needs is important to us. We believe good design and web development is an asset not a consumable.

  • Designing the future

    As designers we have laser focus on improving our clients communication and workflows – this focus on making things better is also applied to our work environments, virtual and physical. We have a paperless office, all our documents are held and archived digitally. We are currently carrying out an office sustainability audit, which is fascinating and thought provoking. We have some great plans to rollout soon which should help others understand their businesses environmental impact coming soon.

People

Wil McDonald

Designer, developer, manager, principal

Kia ora, I gained a BDes degree in 1998, and I've been working solidly in the NZ and UK design scene since. Over this time trends have come and gone and the design community has evolved, particularly online design and development approaches. Our tools have become online services and 'best practice' changes monthly. For me this is a very exciting and rewarding time to design and develop digital content.

The thing which remains a constant however is our clients need to communicate effectively with other people, whoever they maybe. I've worked with hundreds of clients and delight in discovering each projects communication need. From Government Department to Electricity Provider to Artist - I love the challenge of delivering these messages with maximum effect.

My work focus goes beyond project/campaign level requirements though, to me building solid and trusting client relationships is of paramount importance. This is more than delivering delightful results, its about building up an understanding of how a client likes to work, and knowing what a client needs even if it's not quite what they ask you for.

One thing I love about the digital world is how measurable it is, being able to see exactly what happens to peoples experience of my work online is great, because good results speak for themselves

Anyway that's enough from me, here's Ryan :)

Ryan Last-Harris

Designer, developer, project manager

Ryan graduated from Massey University in November 2013 with a first class honours degree in design. He majored in interactive design, building his web development abilities alongside his design skills both inside university and also whilst working on a wide range of side projects outside of the university. Ryan is a stickler for detail and is enthusiastic about typography and composition. He thrives on finding interesting solutions to various design or technical challenges.

Services

Branding

When developing your brand we consider the contexts of your company and target niche so that it not only looks good but also has credible strategy behind it.

Design

Our design process is defined by a mixture of functional, future proof aesthetics and the goal of conveying your companies ethos and brand message to the target audience.

Production

During production we have a focus on cross browser compatibility whilst pushing innovative new web trends. We are experienced coders and carefully test all our products.

Consulting

Having seen projects of many shapes and sizes, we also work at an advisory and strategic level.

Talk to Us

Address:
Office 1, Lv 1
65 Abel Smith St
Te Aro
Wellington 6011

Phone:
04 390 3567

General inquiries:
hello@dartworks.net

Start a project with us
Open a support request
Our building front