Excelling in bespoke website and graphic design, GEL Studios strikes the perfect balance between effortless style and seamless usability. We speak to Managing Director, Graeme, and find out more about how the company has gone from strength-to-strength as it wins Wiltshire’s Leading Web Design and Graphics Agency, 2022.
GEL Studios (GEL) is an award-winning creative agency based in Swindon, Wiltshire, which specialises in creating bespoke websites, beautiful graphics and branding, and meaningful marketing. With a huge variety of clients from international brands through to one-person start-ups, GEL Studios are an ambitious bunch who love working with equally ambitious businesses! Despite being a small team of just ninepeople, the team has more than enough experience and skills that allow it to perform alongside much bigger agencies and take on large projects.
There are a couple of key factors that set GEL Studios apart from its competitors. First is its reputation. “We have strong on-going relationships with our clients, who are typically SMEs with a B2B focus,” explains Graeme Leighfield, GEL’s Managing Director. “Our clients know that we don’t cut corners or use templates to find quick and easy solutions for them. They know that when they work with us they will get exactly what they signed up for.”
Second is GEL’s approachability. “We make sure that our clients feel truly at home with us,” Graeme elaborates. “After all, the most important part of every project is getting to know the client and their business so that we can create something awesome for them. When we’re working with clients, it’s very much a two-way process. We may be the experts in creativity, but the client is the expert at what they do so we rely heavily on their knowledge and input – meaning the end product does their business complete justice.”
Team culture is really important for GEL and, having not only survived but thrived over the last two years during the Covid-19 pandemic, Graeme is quick to highlight that each member of the team is vital to the company’s success. “We go to great lengths to make sure that we’ve got the right people in the right places. Finding people who are honest, approachable and passionate about producing quality work is important. We’re more than willing to invest in the right person to get their skills up to scratch if it’s needed.”
And it’s not just the team that makes a difference, the company itself is a business that ‘does good’ and doesn’t just ‘make a profit.’ Currently on a journey to become B-CORP certified in 2022, GEL donates a bespoke website worth £5,000 to a Wiltshire-based good cause each year. To date, it has worked with Swindon Food Collective, a local food bank which saw a dramatic spike in the number of people who needed help during the pandemic, Threshold, which helps change perceptions and create long-term awareness of homelessness, and RunVember, a good cause that inspires the local community to fundraise for local charities throughout November.
Graeme continues “GEL Studios is all about making a difference to our clients and our local community. It’s what fundamentally drives us each and every day.”
As with many businesses, 2021 was a time of change for GEL as the company reflected on new ways of doing things, and Graeme is keen that 2022 is the year that those new ideas are embedded within the fabric of the company.
“Change happened in almost all areas of the business, and I was able to take a much more birds-eye view of the day-to-day operations, being able to identify areas that could be improved, implement those changes and see the results,” Graeme adds.
When the opportunity came to expand into the unit next door, Graeme and the team jumped at it. While many businesses are moving to a fully-remote or hybrid working environment, GEL knows that in such creative roles, there is a need for face-to-face conversations to happen. Graeme says, “Our aim for our second studio is for it to be a place for those conversations to happen, be it for meetings, workshops, or simply a space for our clients or business to come for a change of scenery.”
Having recently won the title of Wiltshire’s Leading Web Design and Graphics Agency, it seems the world is GEL’s oyster and the company has firm plans for future growth. “We’re expanding our services,” enthuses Graeme. “For too long, we’ve witnessed our clients having bad experiences with marketing agencies and as a result, we’ve now offered Marketing services too. Our clients have been asking us for years if we offer SEO, social media and PPC solutions and now we can and clients are already seeing the benefits.” The future looks sturdy for GEL as it reaches new heights.
