Happy Cog merges with Airbag Industries
August 3, 2009
Happy Cog™ and Airbag Industries, two leading and influential web design firms, announce that they are merging, effective today, August 3, 2009. The resulting super-agency will be called Happy Cog, and will maintain studios in three cities:
- Happy Cog East, in Philadelphia;
- Happy Cog West, in San Francisco (the newest branch); and
- Happy Cog Studios, the original, in New York City.
All three studios will share design, development, user experience, and content strategy resources and personnel. Happy Cog East and Happy Cog West will specialize in client services, web design, and development. Happy Cog Studios in New York, while also designing selected websites, will chiefly focus on business strategy and content publishing via A List Apart Magazine, An Event Apart design conference, and other ventures.
While sharing resources, the three studios will function with a high degree of autonomy. Greg Hoy, President of Happy Cog East, will continue to direct creative services and business development for the Philadelphia branch. Greg Storey, President and Creative Director of Happy Cog West, will do likewise for San Francisco. Jeffrey Zeldman, Agency Founder and Executive Creative Director, will supervise Happy Cog’s strategic, consulting, and publishing businesses as well as selected design projects.
Happy Cog and Airbag have shared personnel and ideas informally in the past, and to staff members in all three locations, the merger feels “right”—and even, in hindsight, inevitable.
“Projects which were outside the scope of each individual firm are now manageable with the larger staff and deeper expertise of the combined in-house Happy Cog team,” says Greg Hoy, President of Happy Cog East. “The merger of these two super-boutiques increases our size and capability without adding overhead, a win for us and our clients.”
Adds creative superstar and Happy Cog West President Greg Storey: “If given the chance to choose who I wanted on my dream web team, it was always the Airbag Industries team and Jeffrey Zeldman, Greg Hoy, and the folks at Happy Cog. In one move, we’ve assembled an amazing staff of experts and leaders in every area of web design and development.”
Founder and Executive Creative Director Jeffrey Zeldman concurs: “Clients seeking extraordinary, strategic, standards-based web design used to tear their hair out choosing between Airbag and Happy Cog. With the merger of our agencies, clients can write once and be confident of getting an appropriate and aesthetically pleasing site that achieves their goals and meets their customers’ needs.”
All inquiries will be handled via Happy Cog’s contact form. For more information, visit the merged agency’s portfolio and publications section, read its web design magazine, and explore its web design conference site.
Read more
- Airbag: Memento
- Zeldman: Happy Cog and Airbag Merge