Bringing the past to the future: How an idea became a reality
Some time ago, just as we were planning to move to the new Tadaplex office, the founders of Tadaweb gave me the important mission to find a way to tell the company’s history to all our employees. Although this seemed to be an easy enough task, I was aware that this meant a lot to our team, and that I had a responsibility to represent every person who had helped us grow this company.
Inspired by other corporations’ creative teams, I chose to divide the basis of this project into different steps, according to their importance:
- Concept and viability
- Research
- Purchases
- Building
The goal of this mission was to put this on a wall near the development teams, so they had a visual reminder of where the company came from. Reminiscing about our older offices, a picture came to my mind from the early days of creative work when building this space. Genna, Tadaweb’s co-founder, was painting a wall black and to be filled with pictures of our team. This is one of my earliest memories of Tadaweb.
This memory coincides with the establishment of the product-market fit in 2015, making it a crucial moment in our history. This made me reflect on our future, a decisively bright one, and the ways we could portray it through marketing materials and swag. It was then that the colour Future Blue was adopted as a company colour.
It was then time to turn these ideas into something more tangible. After several drafts, I came up with the concept art for this big project. Initially, planned to display older pictures on the dark side and use the blue side to celebrate the product suite we are building. Several revisions later, we concluded that our product should have a place of its own and that this should be a space celebrating our people, our space, and our values.
The next step was making sure that the original concept art could be constructed. The whole artwork was first made on Procreate, then we transitioned the concept art to a definitive project with all technical specifications and expectations. Thankfully, everything went great, and with this, we started planning what this unique space could look like!
The first challenge was finding someone who could produce a neon light with our logo, which would be the space's focal point. Next, we had to get started on photo printing and finding the right supplier to paint the wall. The painting was a challenge as we needed the perfect colours and wanted to integrate a gradient in the middle, portraying the transition from the past to the future.
With the help of my colleagues Emma De Vries (executive secretary), Jonathan Sepult (infrastructure), and Wesley Knowles(office management), the concept slowly began taking shape! We enlisted the help of Genna to visualise the composition of over 200 pictures taken from the very early days of Tadaweb until today.
On Friday, July 22nd, after about 6 months from the initial concept, we decided it was time to reveal the plan to everyone. Everything was set and organised on a floor that was not yet in use, completely secret. We started bringing everything into place. The wall was painted some weeks before. Now is the time to put our vision to work with the photographs and concept art we made in the previous months.
Seeing this project come to fruition is incredible, as it gives the new people on the team a look into the history of the company and reminds our veteran Tadaployees how far we’ve come. This phase in our growth is deeply exciting.
As time goes by, the mural will be updated with employee pictures that are either published on social media with the hashtag #LifeAtTadaweb or on our internal communication channels. This was an important moment in Tadaweb's history, and there is so much more to come. I am ready for my next mission to make our workspace as unique and innovative as Tadaweb is!
Curious about the thoughts of some Tadaployees?
A refreshing change to boring concrete walls. A more personalised way of decorating a wall. Nice to see a little bit of the company’s history in pictures — Anonymous
The Tadaweb History Wall proves (especially to the new joiners) that the culture of the company and the values, which are diffused by Tadaweb, are not only words but also form an integral part of the identity of the company. The wall also makes it possible to show that each employee contributed and continues to contribute to the development and success of Tadaweb. I’m already looking forward to appearing on it — Laurane B.
Márcio was born in Brazil and worked for renowned names like the Brazilian Ministry of Health as a UI/UX designer and Yelp with more than 30 different markets supervising their marketing operations. Also, he worked remotely as a product manager for a short period in a company based in Japan, then left Brazil in 2018 to join Tadaweb as a product manager in Luxembourg, later becoming the marketing lead. Márcio is also an author of 2 novels published by Amazon and a patented social media network and e-learning environment for schools in partnership with the University of Brasilia.
