Haha, this is now my favorite we're-a-new-agency promotion

Some feedback on the Dear Friend side of things—love the style btw—I'd like to refer people to you guys but it'll be hard without seeing any work. If the org is that early maybe just show some individual work? I'll make a note to check again later :)

Hey Julian, how are ya?

Good read! I liked the emphasis on retention over adoption. It's a healthier business model and I think it'll lead to a better product in the end.

Interesting. Are there any takeaways from LayerVault's run that your team is trying to avoid/solve?

I think your biggest problem right now is actually around positioning/messaging. What's the goal of the site and who are you trying to reach with it? Because right now (without reading anything) the homepage feels like it's trying to sell me a racing drone.

This seems like a niche activity so I'll assume you're trying to entertain a select group of people and educate everyone else. If so, you may want to focus more on the racing community.

Your main advantage is that this style of racing produces awesome videos. Try leaning on this more; perhaps by treating the homepage like a portal (articles, videos, user content, etc.) rather than a strict landing page. This will play nice with returning users. And it may actually convert better since there's not much of a learning curve here. Once someone watches a race they'll know what's going on. Here's a rough explanation (and a few other tips) of what I mean: https://precursorapp.com/document/fpvracing-17592200880386

I think you'll find more success by making the community feel more encouraged and leveraging their talents into an educational resource for newcomers.

tl;dr The content is great, focus on that more :)

No problem! I'm interested to see how it turns out :)

Good - Homepage looks great and draws you in. - List of past clients is impressive. [1]

Bad - Presentations for the case studies add no value. [2]

Ugly - Nothing. Aesthetically, everything looks great, even the animated gifs you mentioned.

1. The first half of your client list is so strong that the second half almost seems to devalue it. If I see you've worked with huge brands, my instinct is to treat those as signal and the rest as noise. I wouldn't say your current setup is bad but if you only showcased a few of your favorite projects, you might get better results.

2. Your presentations do nothing to excite or tell me what to expect when working with you. They make it clear you're talented, but I knew that from looking at your homepage. The presentation of these case studies could easily be achieved with something like Dribbble or Behance, and that kind of defeats the purpose in my opinion.

Your Ebay case study is a good example of the mixed signals I'm getting as a viewer. It's the biggest brand on the homepage so I clicked it expecting a quick glimpse at your highest caliber of work. I was a little bummed to see a bunch of thumbnails laid out in a very strict grid. When viewed together as a whole, they almost feel a bit cheap, like they were cranked out of an assembly line. I'd be much more interested to see 1 or 2 of your favorite pieces and thoughtful explanations to go along with each. Rough explanation of what I'm trying to describe

Side note: If I didn't bother to watch the ad that used those Ebay drawings, I never would've figured out the overall significance of the images and why they're all gray/white. Also, your pages load so slowly that I actually thought the gray images were placeholders for the page's assets while they finished downloading.

tl;dr Your work is awesome. I just wish I had better means for absorbing all of it :)

Only feedback that comes to mind: I really enjoy the way DN works at the moment. Some minor things could be improved, but as a regular user, I think I would rather changes happen slowly well after reigns have been passed. Just my gut reaction to the news.

P.S. Congrats Andrew :)

Thanks Martin, what an awesome compliment! If you ever want someone to sketch ideas with, let me know :)

Thanks Adam, I appreciate the feedback! The color scheme is still something I'm refining. So far it's been pretty good for concentration and preventing eye strain (also works well with the menu), but I agree that light color schemes seem to sell better. I'll keep that in mind :)

Am I doing it right? https://www.dropbox.com/s/yuqdvkxtymz9dky/Screenshot%202015-04-14%2010.41.33.png?dl=0