Chances are you’ve landed here because you headed to Streamtime to log in and… it’s all different.
Well, hello. Nice to see you. Introducing: our new brand.
We’ve been quietly working on this for the past six months—tossing around strategy, positioning, all the things that our customers talk about every day. It’s been a journey, one of which we’re really proud. But first, let’s take us back to the start.
The very first blog post on this new site is one that Andy wrote almost 8 years ago. About coming to Streamtime and walking the walk. At the time, For The People had just launched the ‘new’ Streamtime, bringing it into the cloud and reinventing traditional, boring timesheeting to the drag-and-drop style time logging you still see in Streamtime today.
And over time, that brand has served us well. Killing the traditional timesheet. Helping creative businesses concentrate on being creative. Building out our feature set to be more robust and cross-functional. All this time, though, we’ve always stood for something more than just software that helps you run your quoting, projects and invoicing (though we think we’re pretty good at that). We’re looking to stand for something in the creative industry as a whole. Something bigger.
Enter Productive Wellbeing.
That’s not what it was called at the beginning. Initially, we simply knew we wanted to introduce better metrics and success tools within the product that don’t just count one side of the business, the profit. We both want to help businesses make a healthy profit and have a healthy team. But there wasn’t any way of measuring that within Streamtime.
So, with the help of some folk at Curtin University, and the SMART Work Framework, we launched the Happiness Coach. We’re a work tool, so the feature’s focused on how team members might rate their work week. Was it creatively stimulating? Did they have agency over their work? And more.
We got great reception from our first release, but we also got some really unhappy customers. Why are you asking these questions? Aren’t you just software?
In this age of capitalism and AI, sure, we do make software. But we’re humans first, and we know humans are the ones on the other side of the computer screen. We believe that the right software doesn’t just give you a bunch of buttons and the same things everyone else does, repackaged. Sometimes you have to be opinionated and stand for something. That’s when Andy started calling the idea Productive Wellbeing: doing your best work while feeling your best.
This is our strategy, and we needed a brand that reflected that.
It's not to say that you’re always going to feel ecstatic at work (in fact, it’d be weird if you did). There are natural ups and downs, good days, bad days, jobs that went well, clients that were awesome, the dry stretches of no new business and their accompanying sleepless nights. It's when something's falling apart at home and you're just trying to keep it together, or vice versa. It’s that balance between the good and the bad, ease and discomfort... the right level of stress to get you to nail that brief. A world of spinning plates, imperfect balance, the cairn of mental rocks that just work, the constant balance of people and profit. That's where the the magic and beauty lies.
When our branding agency NB Studio pitched this concept, we were all in. We’re business balance for creative chaos, helping you keep that constantly imperfect flow: looking after your people while making sure they’re also getting paid. You'll see this idea in the stacks of shapes, the falling, the tilting and teetering and not-so-perfect movements... even in the quirky hover state for the buttons (my personal favourite little detail in this website execution)! We're so excited to bring this brand to life. This website in particular has been a labour of love, showing off both our new brand and the technical dexterity of Koysor Abdul.
Look out for more posts on the behind-the-scenes creative journey with the wonderful folk over at NB Studio in the coming months. Stay tuned!
PS. One guiding principle of our new brand is that we have nothing to hide, and everything to share. So, full disclosure? I’ve been personally running on fumes a little bit. I’m going to take a little time off to reflect, and concentrate on my own wellbeing. And come back stronger, and more creative than ever. Because we all have to walk the walk.
