Who and Why

We’re Department of Web. Yes, this name suggests we’re a department in some government office. No, we’re not. But yes, we do web.

We’re actually another company.

Confused? Good 🙃

I’m Jakub, one of the co-founders, and I’m going to untangle this all. I’ll take you on a journey through our origin, name, and how we got started.

Buckle up, and let’s go.

The Origin

I started as a freelancer a very long time ago. Counting internet-years, it was circa 150 years ago.

About 120 internet-years ago, I started BracketSpace — our WordPress plugins business. But plugins were only a chunk of the company; we also did client projects along the way. Eventually, we focused on outsourcing services, and we did that during the last 6 human-years.

We’ve been working with companies like InsaneLab, WP Served, Good People Digital, and Fusebox, providing mainly WordPress-centric development services. We did countless pixel-perfect WordPress websites, coded from scratch, based on the provided design. We also implemented a big Laravel app accompanied by a React-based embed player. It was all happening under the BracketSpace umbrella.

That was fun, but BracketSpace is the WordPress products brand. No one knows that we even did all these amazing projects! That’s crazy, and we wanted to do something about it.

The Name

One day, I was doing the main CEO duty, which is thinking. Between the various ideas, there was one that was particularly interesting.

I thought about a website that mimics the most stereotypical government office. Lazy, overly complicated, broken, and frustrating. There were ideas to put a contact form that spits out the printable letter you need to send via mail. Or limiting the website operational hours to just a small window during the day.

Then, the Department of Web name naturally just came to mind.

That idea put a smile on everyone’s face, and it seemed to be a perfect side-project. I purchased the domain and forgot about it for a few months. Standard stuff.

Now What?

It just so happened that my (former) wife, Kasia, stepped down from her graphic designer role in one of the local companies she was working with. I, on the other hand, was available to take on some new projects.

Let’s sum up what we had in the equation at this point:

• a talented graphic designer
• a programmer with the team
• side-project waiting to be picked up

So, naturally, we decided to work together and use that project for that purpose. Kasia already had some other ideas for the website, so we shifted from an easter-egg project* to a full-blown idea of a professional software house that doesn’t fuck around and delivers truly top-notch projects.

That’s what we do now at the Department of Web. Our new brand.

*we couldn’t resist doing at least one easter-egg anyway💁‍♂️

The Website

Let’s do a simple website for a start — we agreed. Three months later, we’ve been still polishing the pixels.

That website introduced a whole new stack that we haven’t been working with previously. We did this website statically, using Gatsby and hosting it on the edge. Every component was done in separation using Storybook. All to come to perfection as close as we could. Blazing-fast perfection.

Starting from the design and ending on the implementation, it was a truly joyful process with lots of creative ideas. This is why the simple website idea quickly turned to the UI that sparks joy 😉

So please, click around and let us know in the comments if you like the experience.

That’s it. We started our journey and we hope you’ll join us for the ride.

There are lots of great projects ahead of us, and if you’re keen to see what we’re up to, then follow us on Instagram or Twitter.

Here, on our blog, we’ll be covering web development topics, starting from the business process and ending on the money-related stuff. I promise, good content!

See you on the other site! 🖖-

PS. We’re officially available for hire, so feel free to contact us.