Colophon

There’s a magic that happens when you bring a small group of people together who care about creating things that are beautiful, unique, and special. We’re talking about people who care about the craft as well as the process of creating and building, which we refer to as the “creative unfolding.”

That’s exactly what transpired as we built this brand and website. Over the course of many months, our small group exchanged ideas, shared inspirations, drafted and re-drafted words, and designed and re-designed concepts. We also paused for breaks, knowing that ideas often become more clear when they have space to marinate.

We are all big believers in the open web, which is independent, human, and creative. We worry about plagiarism. We fret about how technology is impacting the planet and society. We’re concerned about how the open web and the environment is suffering because of AI. We’re frustrated with our search engines, communities, and social sites being choked with misinformation and slop. We stress about the loss of trust in words and pictures; the loss of a shared reality. We don’t partake in growth-at-all-costs business models. We mourn the web we lost.

We use AI to build HappyHQ. It's woven into our product and how we work, but we also believe in being intentional about where AI belongs. We believe the future will be decidedly human, and that AI is at its best when people remain firmly in control. This site was one of those moments. We wanted something that felt like the web we remember. Warm, crafted, unmistakably made by people. So everything here was done by hand. The logo, the illustrations, the code, the words. No vibe coding or vibe designing. Just a small group of talented humans doing calm, careful work over many months.

Here are the specific details behind the scenes for this site. The main typeface is Nunito, designed by Vernon Adams in 2011. The typeface for headlines is Coiny, designed by Marcelo Magalhães of Tipos Pereira (São Paulo, Brazil), released around 2017-2018. The site is built with 11ty and deployed on Cloudflare.

The site was designed and developed by Simon Collison. In his original proposal, he added a line, “Web design like its 2002!” and we knew at that moment that he was the best person for the job. Our logo, mascot, brand color palette, and all illustrations were done by Geri Coady. Beyond that, Simon and Geri guided our storyboarding, sketches, inspirations, and helped us to hone our thinking about what we were building. Without them, HappyHQ wouldn’t be nearly as polished or happy!