A friendly mid-year woof from team Harvey 🐶

Winter has fully settled in Melbourne, bringing with it the crisp air, shorter days, time for rest and the inevitable wave of seasonal sickness (hands up any childcare families?). While some of the lucky few are basking in the European summer, we're here, keeping things moving slowly but surely at Harvey.

Here's a little snapshot of what we've been up to and what lies ahead for the rest of the year.

Webflow Certified Partner + more websites 🎉

After 4 years of building websites on Webflow since the early days of Harvey (and more than 14 Webflow websites later) we are thrilled to announce we have just been certified as a Webflow Professional Partner!

Starting out, we spent weeks and weekends, especially through the covid years, obsessed with understanding the features, establishing style guides, CRM structures and effective databases. We’ve been led by curiosity getting into the details, learning the structures and approaches that make the builds better. Week by week through trial and error, pushing and being pushed to improve site visitor experiences and taking pride in the cleanness and structure of the build.

“I’ve loved the challenge of diving into learning Webflow over the last few years” said Sarah after passing the Expert exams.

We love Webflow for its ability to eliminate the divide between design and programming. Plus it’s super easy for clients to make content edits independently in the backend. A few of our Webflow build highlights have been: Bank Australia, The Sociable Weaver and Compass.

Here’s our full portfolio of Webflows builds.

‍

Investing in design and emotional health capability

We’ve had a few team changes here at Harvey as we supported our talented and long term team member and friend Rachel move on to her new adventure and we’ve brought on two new full-time designers on our team, Celine and Susanna. We’re excited to lean into more brand and website work with designers on board the Harvey train🚂

We’ve also invested in a leadership program with Global Leadership Foundation to understand and develop our emotional health levels. The work we’ve been doing is helping us let go of limited thinking and perceptions to make more mindful, constructive and respectful decisions in every situation. It’s been eye (and heart) opening to spend the time on building ‘inner capability’.

Branding unzipped: It's what's inside that counts

A brand is how people remember it, explain it, feel about it - a culmination of their experience of a brand. “People” includes your staff, potential staff, partners, suppliers, competitors, customers, potential customers and more - each with their own experiences of a brand. Logos, visual identity, design, messaging and dare I say it, advertising, are a very small part of the experience.

In our latest ‘how-to’ blog series, we have a chat true brand essence and how to uncover yours - including access to Harvey brand templates, surveys and brand audits: https://www.teamharvey.co/stories/branding-unzipped

First Nations Storytelling & NAIDOC Week

Our client Common Ground is a First Nations not-for-profit and collective of First Nations people changing systems through storytelling. They use storytelling to shift pervasive and harmful narratives, change behaviours and mobilise action. A few ways they tell stories:

☁️ Dreamy: A collection of mindful audio stories from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 

💤First Nations Bedtime Stories: Collaborating with First Nations creators, Common Ground films  Dreaming stories as old as time and brings into homes around Australia 

🔥Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud NAIDOC teacher resource: Common Ground and Learning To Ngangaanha have created an educational resource (which we had the pleasure of designing!) with informative content and activities to celebrate NAIDOC this year. We’ve decided to do it as team at Harvey and have a yarn about we’ve learnt at the end of NAIDOC week.

‍

B Corp Assembly - more questions than answers

Earlier this year, Sarah and Becky got to attend The B Corp Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Assembly 2024. A gathering that united over 300 certified B Corp businesses on a collective journey towards a more sustainable and purpose-driven future. It was time out to question everything, be inspired, be challenged, reminded about the urgency of the climate crisis, acknowledge progress but also total brokenness in our system and connect with other humans striving for progress. Sarah and Becky share their reflections here about leaving with more questions than answers.

‍

Until next time

Finally, as EOFY looms around the corner, we’ve decided not to rush the 30 June deadline for our annual donation but take a step back to review how and where we want to invest our impact efforts most meaningfully including donations, pro bono work and investing in climate tech companies.

Thanks for spending some time catching up on all things Harvey. We’d love to hear from you and learn about all the cool things you’re doing. Drop us a line sometime and say hi.

‍

Becky