Armando Diaz took an interest in design at an early age.
As a child, he remembers convincing his mom to take him to Kroger just so he could look at the packaging and prices of big brands and how consumers interacted with them. Then, he'd go home to the west side of Lexington, Kentucky, and see how those brands contrasted from the small, immigrant-owned businesses in his neighborhood.
Later, as an intern at Bullhorn Creative and student at the University of Kentucky, Diaz honed in on those differences and looked to bridge the gap between high-level design and what was accessible and meaningful for small businesses.
That's how Diaz first recognized the demand for design work from startup companies that would eventually lead to the creation of his own agency, WWS. The young design collective now works with some of Kentucky's most promising early-stage startups, such as Timeout, VividCharts and New Frontier.
"I've never been at a formal creative agency where you're supposed to learn and work under a creative director before working your way up to interact with the client and lead design teams," Diaz said in a recent interview. "I've reversed that... I've thrown myself into these rooms where no one speaks design and presented options that are achievable for startups or small businesses.
"Because of that, I think we've had some pretty good success for WWS. We don't come from a background of titles — we come from a background of necessity."
While Diaz got his first startup design gig as a junior, he landed his first post-college job as one of the early employees at AppHarvest (Nasdaq: APPH) in 2019. He was a digital media specialist there for nearly two years as the company went public, while moonlighting as a freelance designer.
Diaz then struck out on his own with WWS last year, pulling together talented designers he met in college.
In addition to Diaz, the WWS's design team includes Reba Martinez, digital product manager and operations, Gabe Tomlin, writing strategist, and Abby Green, senior designer. Jamar Johnson is the head of sales and development. They all met as students at UK, and Diaz brought them into the fold by telling them his vision for WWS.
"There wasn't a need to make these promises like, 'We're going to be the next billion-dollar design startup,'" Diaz said. "I was candid with our ambitions; like, 'Hey, I'm on this crazy journey to figure out where design is heading in the next 100 years — come join me.' The rest is history."
WWS has since found a niche in working with startup companies, which typically don't have capital to spare on advertising campaigns or branding work.
Diaz began his work with startups as a junior in college, but WWS's first start-to-finish project was with Lexington-based VividCharts. The collective did the startup's branding, redesigned its website, rethought its messaging and helped position it to where it is today as a data engagement platform for ServiceNow, Diaz said. You can read more about VividCharts in my April profile here.
"Startups don't have the biggest budget. They don't have huge runway with their finances or their time," he said. "I've used these personal experiences to make these really smart assumptions with limited information. That's what's helped me, and helped me find more creative people who come from this savvy background."
With limited overhead, WWS can afford to be selective, Diaz said, noting the collective only wants to work with honest people who are building important things that "aren't adding to the noise of the world." He declined to disclose the agency's revenue.
"As a young design startup, we're still exploring our workflows. We're still figuring out our process to help improve those workflows and get to the point where we are a tech-enabled design studio," he said. "We're not going to become a social media content company just because we know it's easy retainer money. We've got the ability to say no right now and that's helping us stay on track."
The collective, split between Kentucky and Austin, Texas, has experience in artificial intelligence and data, food and beverage, health care, music tech and nonprofit sectors, specializing in innovation sprints and prototyping, brand and product strategy, identity systems, rebranding pivots and naming.
"We have this phrase that says, 'No stone left unturned and all that good jazz,'" Diaz explained. "When you think of a jazz musician, they have the opportunity to play any notes that they have. We see ourselves in that space where it's like this is jazz for us. We're just able to like play these really awesome notes as loud as possible that you're going to hear it all the way up in the nosebleeds."
WWS will host a virtual design festival on July 8, where it plans to rebrand companies in real-time. The event, which is open to the public, will be judged by Kale & Flax, Timeout, Forecastr, Empress, Foko Y La Pana, Black Tech Capital and Dreamwishes. It's called BLANKDESIGN, and it's free to register.
"It's going to be a really cool way to just show people our process," Diaz said. "There's no secret sauce — we're just really good thinkers."
