Rhyme & Reason Design opened its virtual doors way back in 2008. Hustle culture was big, entrepreneurship was just becoming a college major, the iPhone was in its infancy and Facebook was cool. In other words, times were different.

Fast forward to today. COVID is a common term in our vocabulary, TikTok has taught us everything we didn’t know we needed, Zoom has created a fashion mullet (professional on top, party on the bottom) and mental health isn’t hush hush. In other words, times are different.

A lot has happened in the last 14 years, and though we’d like to say that we haven’t changed much, we have. For starters, we’ve gotten wiser…and older.

And with age and wisdom comes the realization that maybe what we originally valued isn’t as necessary as it once was. Or maybe it is, but we see it through a different lens.

From the very beginning, we were focused on creating not just a better agency experience, but a better lifestyle. Back then, we translated that to a variety of core values, including “Create happy designs (or copy),” “Find the silver lining,” “Share your wit and wisdom,” “Become part of the family,” “Be, create and do awesome,” “Wear your passion on your sleeve” and “Make time for fun.”

In the years that have followed, we quickly realized that “passion” wasn’t as fundamental to the agency that we were creating as we thought. So, we simply removed it. There was no pomp or circumstance, we just hit delete and kept it moving.

However, today we’re making a change to one of our main values – “Make time for fun.”  And that requires a bigger conversation with you, our friends and our family. We’re replacing “fun” with “life” in order to create a space for our team (and our community) to “Make time for life.”  This does not mean we are hanging up our fun hats and becoming buttoned-up bores. We’ll always be fun, as will our designs and our copy.

But after many conversations and heart-to-hearts, we’ve come to the realization that making time for fun isn’t as important to the well-being of our team as is making time for life.

And that’s not to say life isn’t fun – because it 1,000% is – but sometimes you have to prioritize the not-so-fun stuff in order to be a better human – personally and professionally.

Over the years, fun has shown up in a variety of ways, from cupcake toasts and confetti poppers to have-fun-at-work day, all of which were (and still are) incredibly important to our culture. Yet as we’ve weathered a global pandemic, a cultural reckoning, a great re-evaluation, remote work and literal life and death, fun hasn’t always been possible or necessary. Instead, we’ve needed more kindness and compassion, more empathy and understanding, more time to take care of ourselves and those around us.

In all honesty, this core value shift is actually bringing us closer to our original goal for R&R – to create a better agency AND a better lifestyle. In the days and years ahead, we hope you embrace this updated value and see how making time for life – and all that comes with it – makes us better creatives, better partners and better people. Not to mention, more fun. ☺

To learn more about our other values, check out our previous post “An Ode to Our Core Values.”