The magical process of giving shape to an idea

From a book to a living archive of inspiration

Back in December 2025, when we started thinking about the fact that this year would mark /nk’s 20th anniversary, we had several ideas. One of them was to create something closer to a book. A piece that would stand the test of time. Something like a journey through everything we had lived over all these years.

We gathered references, looked at different pieces, explored formats, and I have to admit there was something beautiful in that search: it made us look back. We wanted to understand what had happened, what was worth telling, to put the journey into perspective, and to try to make sense of all these years. And, to be fair, very few people inside the studio actually knew the full story.

Twenty years is a hell of a long time. And in my case, it is literally half of my life. That one hit me. When I look at it that way, it becomes even stranger, because so much happened along the way, both personally and professionally.

In 2006, I was building websites in Flash. Then Flash died. We moved to HTML5. We built our first CMSs with Angular 1, and today we talk about vibe coding, AI, headless CMS, and things we could not have imagined a few years ago. We went from making “logos” to creating full branding strategies. The tools changed, the processes changed, team structures changed, clients changed, platforms changed, and timing changed.

Everything changed. Or almost everything.

We found something that, in different ways, had been present throughout all these years. Something we may not have always named the same way, or experienced in the same way, but that worked as a fairly constant thread: inspiration.

When it first appeared on the table as an insight to tell the story of our 20 years, we did not know exactly what to do with it. We knew there was “something there,” but it still had no shape. Many times, ideas begin like that: as a half-formed intuition. Something appears, it does not fully click yet, but it has enough strength to keep you thinking about it.

We live in an industry, and in a time, where everything pushes us to produce faster, solve faster, present faster, and move on to the next thing faster. This project made something very simple crystal clear to us: ideas also need time.

They need conversations.

They need doubts.

They need to change shape.

They need to go through moments where someone on the team says, “Hey, I’m not really sure where this is going,” and for that doubt not to kill the idea, but to help it find a better version.

That is kind of what happened to us.

As part of that process, at some point we stopped asking ourselves what we wanted to show and started asking ourselves what had brought us this far. And that was the inspiration to keep pushing every day. So what better starting point than that?

For several years now, we have talked about /nk through the idea of inspiring people. Our claim says: “We empower brands to inspire people,” as a way of expressing something that has always been at the center of the studio: creating projects that move the needle, generate impact, strengthen businesses, connect… and, ultimately, inspire.

In the middle of that whole process, the strongest click came when we reached a much deeper insight: that tagline was the result of something that happened to us very often.

Before inspiring, we were inspired.

And that made us go deeper into the idea of how to celebrate these 20 years.

I am one of those people who believes an idea does not become good just because it is well executed, well designed, well written, well coded, well animated, or well presented. It can meet the brief, respect the timeline, and look impeccable. But if it does not connect with something deeper, if it does not find a reason to exist beyond a delivery, it will hardly leave a mark.

And what we wanted to do was something much deeper than a “nice site” filled with effects, WebGL, and smooth scroll. We wanted to find a form that truly represented us.

In February, we started sending out the invitations. Each one was personalized, with a specific reference to what had inspired us about each person we invited: clients, collaborators, friends, references, and people from the industry.

In early March, the first responses started arriving. I especially remember the first one I received. It was from Liva Grinberga, whom I met at one of the Awwwards Conferences. When I read her story, I was really moved. I felt the project was no longer just an idea; it was starting to become real.

Mati, our CTO, later put it in a very honest way: “I still remember those first conversations when I was thinking, ‘what kind of crazy thing does Lucas want to do?’ And now that I see it brought to life, it’s incredible.”

And he ended up saying something that meant a lot to me: that it had to be “one of the most beautiful sites we’ve ever made, without a doubt.”

I love that contrast because it explains very well the process of giving shape to an idea.

Most ideas need to go through doubt. Through the “I’m not sure this is the way.” Through being challenged. Not to weaken them, but to enrich them.

Then even more magical things happened. I wrote to Paula Scher, one of the most influential designers in the world, thinking she might never reply. And in less than a day, she answered saying yes, that she was all-in with the project. She shared the story of how she built her career from just three words of feedback. That confirmed to us that something was happening with this idea.

When we finally launched the site, that feeling materialized in a different way.

People wrote us beautiful messages. That they had cried while browsing it. That it was hard to create something so moving. That it had given them goosebumps. That it was “a gift we were giving to the world.”

Ideas worth pursuing do not always appear overnight. Sometimes they do. But many times, they need to mature. They need us to look at them more, ask more questions, connect more things, and give them space to find their form.

This project was a way to celebrate 20 years, no doubt.

But it was also a way to remember that ideas need evolution, time, and a reason to exist.

Lucas
/nk.studio

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