Pop, crisps and cake, but no disco
This is the invite to my 14th birthday party. Harveys, Guardian Centre, Rotherham. Tuesday 13 December 1994. 7.00 till 9.45. Admit 1.
If you know, you know.
I'd been hoping to dig out a photo of 14-year-old me for this. I couldn't find one (which is probably for the best). But I did find this, and it felt about right, because on Sunday 25 October, Bravand turned 14.
Pop, crisps and cake. No disco. And a lot to celebrate.
Jilly started Bravand in 2012. I was involved pretty much from the start, heading up User Research as a freelancer, before joining as Director in 2014. Since then we've moved from London back to South Yorkshire, shipped a lot of platforms, products and services, and worked with more brilliant freelancers than I can count.
This year, two things changed that really matter. One is about what we call ourselves. The other is about why we exist.
We've stopped calling ourselves a digital agency
It never quite fitted.
"Digital agency" conjures up a particular picture - someone you brief, who goes away and comes back with a website. That's never really been us. The work we're proudest of starts long before anyone opens a design tool, and carries on long after launch.
What we actually do is help organisations work out what to build and why. Then we design it and build it properly. Sometimes that's a website. Often it's a platform, a product, a booking system, an app for engineers in the field, or a service that has to work for people who'll never read the brief.
So Bravand is now (still) a product and service design studio. Same people. Same collective model - a small core team and a network of brilliant freelancers, matched to each project. Just a name that finally describes what we do.
If you've followed our blog this year, you'll have seen us auditing and fixing our own website. This is the other half of that work: being clearer about who we are, not just how fast the page loads.
Fresh Meet, powered by Bravand
When I was handing out those invites in late 1994, nobody was telling kids in Rotherham that a career in digital was something they could do. To be fair, it was a good eight months before Netscape went public and kicked off the dot-com boom, so nobody was telling anyone much.
Two years later, I was halfway through Chemistry, Biology and Physics A-levels, aiming for Medicine, when I got kicked out of sixth form. A year of work, Sports Science at Sheffield College and then Sheffield Hallam got me back on track. It was a longer road than it needed to be.
That's part of why, since 2013, we've run careers work with young people alongside our client work. In 2025 that work got its own home: Fresh Meet CIC, a social enterprise helping young people access careers in the tech and creative sectors. Fresh Meet does three things:
- Paid digital internships - real work, on real projects, for real wages
- Careers in Digital workshops - in schools, colleges, Youth Hubs and community settings, showing young people what a career in our industry actually looks like
- Innovation Labs - days where young people tackle live challenges from real organisations. Our first, in July, brought together 70 learners and six live Challenge Briefs
The change this year is in how we describe the relationship between the two. Fresh Meet is powered by Bravand.
Our client work, our capability and our credibility are what land the paid projects Fresh Meeters work on. Every brief Bravand wins is a chance for a young person to do real, paid work on something that matters, and get past the old catch-22 of needing experience to get experience.
So when you work with Bravand, you're not just getting a product and service design studio. You're also helping open doors for young people who, like 14-year-old me, might not know yet that those doors exist.
Thank you
Fourteen years doesn't happen on its own. Thank you to:
- Our clients, for trusting us with the hard stuff, and for sticking with us when the brief turned out to be a different brief
- Our freelancer team, who have always been the backbone of how we work
- The schools, colleges, employers and partners who've opened doors for Fresh Meet
- The Youth Hubs, youth workers and community organisations who reach young people who aren't in a classroom, for whatever reason, and make sure they don't miss out
- Every young person who has turned up, had a go and surprised everyone, including themselves
And to Jilly, who started all this in 2012. You rock.
Here's to 15, yeah?
If you have a product or service that isn't working as it should, or something new you need to get right, let's talk. We'll help you work out what to build and why, and then build it properly.
And if you work with young people, in a classroom or well beyond it, or you've got a real problem you'd like some sharp young minds to take a crack at, we'd love to hear from you too.
- hello@bravand.com
- 0331 630 1105
- Or use the contact form below
