Team day recap: our new model, pastries and portraits

At our recent Zetteler team day, we discovered something about our team: ten years and ten days. That’s how long some of the team has been with us. 

It might be natural to assume that the person with a decade of experience under their belt has more to say about our work than the person who joined last week. Sure, they might literally have more anecdotes and background context. But the newer team member brings a fresh perspective.

The conversations this prompted were fun. Of course, a lot of companies talk about how fun their team days are. This, inevitably, prompts jokes about ‘forced fun’ from those compelled to attend. So we’re left in a tricky bind of wanting to make it clear that our special day uniting the peeps behind Zetteler and Design Can over delicious pastries (thank you Pophams!) was actually a delight without being corny. 

Hosted by the emotional-guru, self-styled edutainer Reuben Christian, good work was done that day. A lot of people who hadn’t met before, yet often collaborated on the same projects, finally got to ditch Zoom for some essential IRL small talk and banter. There were 15 individual photoshoots (resulting in two edited images per person). And we hatched plans for projects to come. 

In recent times, our model of working has evolved. The team includes more highly-specialised freelancers who work closely with inhouse full-timers. Coming together and getting our portraits taken by the camera-lens-maestro Rick Pushinsky is a kind of statement about our approach. There’s a lot of special people in our community, yet every single one is essential to how we work.

We’re still figuring things out. We wouldn’t want to fallback on a reliable formula. What the newer approach allows us to do is move quickly, bring in a lot of different perspectives to a project and find fresh ways to tackle any problem. We’re confident across many different sectors and can always find the right expert when we need them. But keeping close as a team is more essential than ever – regardless if you’ve been with us for ten years or ten days.