The best website in our history (at the time) lasted just over a year.

Our best website ever lasted just over a year.

After 20 years and 11 websites, /nk replaced a site that was still working. Lucas reflects on creativity, experience, and knowing when to evolve.

Back in June 2025, we launched what, to us, was the best website we had built in twenty years.

An immersive experience inspired by our offices, with a massive slash at the center of it all. You could wander through it, explore it, get inside it. On the homepage, our “We empower brands to inspire people” welcomed you alongside an “Explore our universe”. (WTF, what the hell were we thinking? Maybe it was really cool back then. Today it sounds pretty strange to me, haha).

Anyway… I loved it. Actually, I still do.

We had started building it six months before launch. Many of the decisions behind it are now almost two years old. And quite a lot has happened since then.

The world changed quickly, and far more profoundly than we expected. The way we work changed, the way we look for information, and the way we choose who to work with.

Even after twenty years in this wonderful industry, there were moments when we weren’t sure what was coming or how to move forward.

When a company launches something new, it usually shows you the result and skips over the turning point: questioning things that were working.

That happened to us. Our previous website hadn’t failed. Until last week, it was still our main source of leads. But questioning something you love, especially when it works, is even harder.

One morning, while walking my daughter Aurora to kindergarten, it hit me: twenty years of experience don’t guarantee you the next twenty. They should, though, give you the judgment to know when to change.

For a long time, we used our websites to show what we were capable of. We wanted someone to land on one, be surprised, and think: “Damn, I want these guys to do something like this for my brand.”

Of course, we were chasing awards. We love trying new technologies, pushing ideas to the limit, and making things no client has even asked us to make yet. Our previous website was a great expression of that. And boy, did it do its job.

But we were never doing it just to entertain ourselves. Well, okay, a little bit, but not 100%. Behind those experiences was someone we wanted to reach. Someone looking for something different for their brand, their audience, or their business.

Sometimes that was very intentional. Other times, almost instinctive. And I have a theory about instinct: to me, it’s accumulated experience that comes straight from your gut before it reaches your head. We make good decisions because we’ve spent years making things, testing, getting things wrong, and learning.

Looking back helped us put words to something we had been doing for a long time: creativity isn’t about making the wildest or most spectacular thing possible. It’s about connecting the dots to find the best answer for someone, in a particular context.

Sometimes that answer is an immersive experience. Other times, it’s helping someone land on your website and understand, in ten seconds, how you can help them.

With a portfolio that already shows what we’re capable of, our new site could give more room to the second one.

Because people don’t come to /nk thinking, “OK, I need a giant 3D slash built with WebGL.” They reach out for a brand, a website, or an app. But behind that request there’s often an organization looking for investment, entering a new market, trying to clarify its offering, or deciding what product to build.

We had been seeing this in client conversations for years. We already worked this way, but we needed a shared framework. That’s why we now talk about services and programs, and why the website explains what we can help solve before showing everything we know how to produce.

Among all these changes, we went from getting inquiries through awards platforms to hearing from more and more people who found us because ChatGPT, Gemini, or a similar tool recommended us.

And hey, this isn’t about writing for robots. It’s about something much simpler: how people search. Today, they can explain what’s going on and ask who they should call without opening the first ten websites Google suggests.

When I hear about GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), which aims to improve how you appear in AI-generated answers, I think about how it needs a really strong SEO foundation. With AXO/AX (Agent Experience Optimization or Agent Experience), experiences for agents, I see something similar: there is no good AX without excellent UX. Each has its own techniques, of course, but it all starts with understanding what someone needs and making the path easier.

It reminds me of when people talked about Design Thinking as if it were a completely new way of solving problems. And I remember thinking: isn’t this pretty similar to the design process I learned as a student at FADU/UBA?

Long story short, we’re still creating by people, for people. Now, sometimes, there’s an agent in the middle.

All of this became the foundation of our new website. Two and a half months, more than ten people, several agents (obviously), a lot of conversations, and tools we didn’t have eighteen months ago. A lot of speed, yes, but above all, a lot of shared judgment.

I said it in the very first /nk.news: if you’re good, AI will make you good faster. And if you’re crap, AI will make you crap faster. Finishing something sooner doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t create more value for the person on the other side.

This is our eleventh website in twenty years. Roughly one every two years. There’s a saying about the cobbler’s children having no shoes. I prefer our own version: in a blacksmith’s home, the knives should be made of steel. If we help other organizations evolve, we need to challenge our own business with the same standards.

I don’t think every company needs to change its website every two years. Not even close. But it’s worth asking now and then whether the story you’re telling still represents what your business and your customers need today.

I look at the new nk.studio and I’m proud. Just as proud as I was of the previous one when we launched it.

And maybe that’s the hardest part of all this: accepting that something can still appeal to you, still work, and yet no longer be the best answer.

I don’t know how long this version will last. And I’m not too worried about it. What would worry me is telling exactly the same story two years from now, just because it once worked for us.

I think we still have a lot left to question.

And I’m glad we do.