Luminary

Digital agency Luminary has been officially named by Beyond Blue as one of its Supporting Partners, joining some of Australia’s top businesses. Luminary’s Supporting Partner status has been bestowed by Beyond Blue in recognition of the agency’s extensive support, including the provision of discounts, pro-bono and in-kind support.

Beyond Blue’s new website, launched in 2024, was built by Luminary and Sitecore on the Sitecore XM Cloud platform. Luminary will continue to work with Beyond Blue on leveraging digital solutions to improve the design and adoption of mental health information, support and advice across the Australian community.

Commenting on the partnership, Luminary’s CEO Marty Drill said:

As a purpose-driven organisation we believe in Beyond Blue’s mission and are proud to be working with one of Australia’s most well-known, trusted and visited mental health organisations. Over the past few years, we’ve had the privilege of supporting Beyond Blue’s digital transformation efforts, through offering financial support and providing strategic guidance on how to use technology effectively. We are honoured to be recognised as a Supporting Partner of Beyond Blue and we look forward to further collaborating with them to achieve better mental health outcomes in the broader community. Digital has the potential to make life easier, but it also brings challenges. We see this partnership as an opportunity to show that technology can also be a force for good.

Marty Drill

Drill said the partnership was in line with Luminary’s guiding mission, which is to ‘make digital bright, and the human experience brighter’. “We see it as our responsibility to make the human experience brighter by using the tools at our disposal to provide better access to mental health support,” he said.

Beyond Blue CEO Georgie Harman thanked Luminary for their generous support and looks forward to working with them in the future.

This partnership will help us continue to improve our digital supports, making it easier for people to access the right information and support at the right time, in a way that best suits them. Almost half of the population will experience a mental health condition at some point in their life. Beyond Blue’s website is often the first port of call for someone trying to navigate a mental health issue. Our partnership with Luminary has been crucial to ensuring we continue to be a safe and reliable place for people to access support, advice and information. We know that the earlier people get support, the sooner they can get back on track. With Luminary we’re making it easier for people to feel better earlier, get well and stay well.

Georgie Harman

Mental wellbeing is a strong focus within Luminary, with team members having access to an on-staff coach to support them in their personal and professional development, a policy of ‘no-questions-asked’ sick leave, mental health and mindfulness training, regular events to keep people connected, and an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that is available to team members and their families.

Since 2021, Luminary has also been a certified B Corp, solidifying the agency’s commitment to balancing profit with the needs of people and the planet.

For the past two years, Luminary’s Melbourne team has taken part in Beyond Blue’s 2XU Wellness Run and will this year take on the Coastrek team hiking challenge to raise funds for Beyond Blue. The agency also plans to roll out a number of mental health initiatives throughout the year under the banner of ‘Brighter Days’.

About Luminary
Luminary is an independent Australian digital agency that has been creating award-winning experiences since 1999. With a portfolio that includes some of the most well-known names in the Australian government, retail and corporate sectors, Luminary’s offering includes digital strategy and transformation, UX design, development, hosting, and digital marketing. The agency specialises in the implementation of mid to large-scale digital projects across leading DXP, CMS and headless platforms including Kentico, Kontent.ai, Optimizely, Sitecore, Contentful and Umbraco.

About Beyond Blue
Beyond Blue is an independent, not-for-profit organisation working to reduce the impact of anxiety, depression and suicide in Australia. Beyond Blue provides information and support to help everyone achieve their best possible mental health, regardless of age, background and wherever they live. Beyond Blue works to give everyone in Australia the confidence to speak openly about anxiety, depression and suicide – both to seek support when they need it and to check in with those close to them – and tackle prejudice and discrimination wherever they exist. Beyond Blue’s tools, resources and services create mentally healthy environments. Through dedicated programs, Beyond Blue supports schools, workplaces and community organisations to protect and promote good mental health.

For media enquiries contact:
Tami Iseli
Marketing Manager

Digital agency Luminary is marking 25 years in business by retrospectively offsetting its carbon emissions back to when it started operating – 1 July 1999.

Luminary CEO, Marty Drill, said:

As we come to the end of our 25th year, we are thrilled to announce that we have committed to offsetting all of the carbon dioxide we have created since we began, with the planting of 5000 mangrove trees in Bali.

In 2019, Luminary celebrated its 20th anniversary by attaining carbon neutral certification. Since the start of the 2018 financial year, the agency has sponsored the planting of trees in the Reforestation Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Project in Western Australia, through carbon offset provider Carbon Neutral.

Luminary also worked with Carbon Neutral to calculate its total carbon emissions back to 1 July 1999, and has partnered with Mangrove Rangers in Bali (where it also has offices) for the planting of the mangrove trees.

Drill added:

We became carbon neutral as we wanted to do business in a way that offsets our impact,” said Drill. “As we approached our quarter-century milestone, we started to consider not just our present and future impact, but the impact we’ve had over the years we’ve been in business. We have been offsetting our carbon footprint since the end of the 2018 financial year, but that didn’t take into consideration the previous 17 financial years. So we decided to take action to offset our impact over that time.

Part of our responsibility as a certified B Corp is to balance the needs of people and the planet with profits, and to influence change. We hope that by taking steps to address our historical carbon impact, we can make a positive contribution to the movement for change.

As well as marking its 25th anniversary by retrospectively offsetting its carbon impact, Luminary will be donating $25,000 to 36 charities throughout the year. The program, dubbed ‘Luminary Hearts’, has been running since February. Luminary Hearts invites Luminary’s team members to nominate causes that are close to their heart. Each month, three different charities, put forward by the team, receive a share of the total donation pool of $25,000. Donations are being used to support a diverse range of charities across Australia and Indonesia.

Some of the key milestones in Luminary’s 25-year history

1999: The agency launched with four people under the name ‘Get Started’
2000: Signed its first ‘household name’, partnering with Telstra to provide e-commerce sites to clients in Tasmania
2004: Started working with its longest continuous client, construction equipment hire company Fleet Plant Hire
2009: Built the website for the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, which became the most widely broadcasted Royal Commission report in its first 48 hours
2016: Expanded operations to Indonesia, with the opening of its first Bali office
2018: Rebranded from Get Started to Luminary
2019: Became carbon neutral with the offsetting of carbon emissions through sponsorship of the Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Project in Western Australia
2021: Became certified as a B Corp, cementing its pledge to use business as a force for good

Three competitor digital agencies – Luminary, Devotion and Hardhat – are about to take their rivalry to the streets in a battle to see who can run and walk the furthest distance in support of The Fred Hollows Foundation during the month of August.

The challenge is part of the Foundation’s Fred’s Big Run initiative, a virtual fitness initiative where participants set themselves a challenge to run or walk a target distance and raise funds to help the Fred Hollows Foundation restore sight to the needlessly blind.

The three-way agency challenge was initiated by Luminary, whose client portfolio includes Fred Hollows. This year will be the Luminary team’s fourth year of undertaking Fred’s Big Run.

Luminary’s first Fred’s Big Run campaign was in 2020. The idea initially emerged as a way to keep team members’ spirits up and maintain a sense of camaraderie during Melbourne’s second lockdown. To help keep up the momentum, Luminary set up its Big Run up as a virtual tour around Victoria – the hope being that it might inspire participants to bring some much needed tourism to regional areas at the end of the lockdown. Each week the team’s collective distance would be tallied up and the ultimate destination recorded on a map, with a fictional update on towns passed and adventures had along the way.

In 2021, Luminary took on the Fred Hollows Foundation at their own game, with a virtual race from the Fred Hollows office in Sydney to Bourke in outback NSW (the final resting place of Fred Hollows) and on to Luminary’s office in Melbourne.

In 2022, Luminary challenged rival digital agency Revium. This year, they decided to take it up a notch and challenge not one, but two, competitor agencies. Enter Devotion and Hardhat and ‘Fred’s Big Agency Challenge’.

Hartdhat Operations Director, Katy Ross, said:

It’s the first time Hardhat has been involved in this fun and inclusive fundraising activity. The added bonus of a little healthy competition will get everyone going…. and what better cause than restoring sight for someone?

The Big Agency Challenge kicked off on Tuesday 1 August, with a run and walk around Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens ‘Tan’ track. As well as being a launch event for the challenge, it also celebrated the start of Luminary developer Tony Duan’s fourth year of running every single day. Previously a self-declared ‘non-runner’, Duan started his running journey at the beginning of Luminary’s first Fred’s Big Run campaign back in 2020, and has not missed a day of running since.

Luminary CEO, Marty Drill, said:

Fred’s Big Run is such a great initiative and our team is really excited to get behind it for another year. I find it amazing that someone’s sight can be restored for as little as $25! As a virtual challenge, people can run or walk as far as they like, so there’s a really low barrier to entry. And most importantly, it’s all for a fantastic cause.

The UNICEF Australia website, designed and built by digital agency Luminary, has won the overall site of the year award in the Australian Web Awards.

Named in memory of Australian web pioneer Nigel McFarlane, the McFarlane Prize for Excellence goes to the entry that performed the best across all five judging disciplines – accessibility, content, design, development and user experience.

The Australian Web Awards (AWA) were founded in Western Australia in 2005 by a group of web developers and became a national event in 2009. Each year entries are judged by industry leaders and the cream of the crop are recognised and awarded at the annual AWA awards ceremony. This year’s ceremony was held on Saturday 20th May, at Doltone House LOFT in Sydney’s Darling Harbour precinct.

The UNICEF Australia website was the product of a partnership between UNICEF and Luminary that began in 2020. The site was built on headless CMS platform Kontent.ai.

UNICEF Australia’s Chief Marketing Officer Libby Hodgson, said:

With a cumbersome and outdated design and user experience on our old site, UNICEF Australia needed to create a world-class online experience for a much broader spectrum of supporters and stakeholders. We listened and engaged with our supporters and stakeholders first, to embark on a discovery process in which to inform a redesign. It was paramount that we also solved user needs in a way that was unmistakably UNICEF while better reflecting our local identity. And we strived for a modern e-commerce architecture that would allow us to be more efficient and effective in delivering great experiences for our supporters as well as being intuitive and easily navigable for all users.

Hodgson also added:

The McFarlane prize represents the best of the best in Australia, so we are honoured and delighted for our teams to receive this recognition. It was a monumental effort from not only the core project team at UNICEF Australia, but stakeholders past and present right across the organisation. We couldn’t have done it without the expertise, passion and spirited partnership of Luminary. We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to the Australian Web Awards and the judging panel for their consideration and decision in awarding us this prize.

Commenting on the award win, Luminary CEO Marty Drill said:

This was a significant piece of work that has made a huge difference to many people. By creating and investing in www.unicef.org.au, Luminary has helped UNICEF in its work to raise money to support kids around the world and in Australia. Our mission is to make digital bright and the human experience brighter. This is what it looks like in reality. We wanted to do something that would help people in countries that are affected by famine, floods, drought, war and instability. Specifically, we wanted to make a difference to children, to help give them a chance in life. The McFarlane Prize is one of the highest honours achievable in the Australian digital industry and this win is a huge credit to both UNICEF and Luminary.

Since its launch, the new UNICEF Australia website has delivered substantial improvements in conversion rate, SEO performance and overall site health.

Jonathan Nolan, Head of Performance, Growth and Insights at UNICEF Australia, said:

The new site is a stark improvement in on-site performance across core web vitals, depth and quality of content serving a diverse audience group, streamlined conversion and e-commerce processes, a cleaner UI and information architecture, improved speed in launching content and significantly improved analytics. While there is always more to be done, this site now gives us the right platform to drive continuous improvement and allows us to accelerate results for children and young people.

Digital agency Luminary has been officially certified as a B Corp, confirming its commitment to corporate social responsibility.

The certification follows a rigorous independent assessment by global organisation B Lab, which assesses a company’s impact across five key areas: environment, community, workers, customers, and governance.

A certified B Corp, or ‘Benefit Corporation’, is a business that has met the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability – with an underlying philosophy of ‘using business as a force for good’.

There are currently around 4000 certified B Corps worldwide, across 74 countries and more than 150 industries. While the B Corp movement is still fairly nascent in Australia, it is fast gaining momentum, with Australia and New Zealand being the fastest growing region per capita for B Corps.

CEO Marty Drill said:

Luminary’s company mission is ‘to make digital bright and the human experience brighter’ and we felt that becoming certified as a B Corp was completely aligned with that mission.

In many ways, the certification was a validation of the path we were already on, while in some respects it challenged us to reach a little further. B Corp gives us a way to assess how we’re performing across a range of areas.

Sustainability has been a key focus for Luminary in recent years. The agency has been carbon neutral since 2019, offsetting its carbon footprint through the Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Reforestation Project in Western Australia. It has also hosted team tree planting days and has replaced plastic bottles and takeaway coffee cups in its offices with aluminium bottles and keep cups.

Luminary has also had a longstanding commitment to flexible work arrangements, with remote work being common practice well before the pandemic made it a necessity.

A solid charity and NFP client base, along with support for a broad range of charitable initiatives, are also among the ways Luminary has endeavoured to make a positive contribution.

Drill added:

Since we began in 1999, we have focused on improving people’s experience at work and on the web. From the beginning, we have been a little bit different to traditional business. We wanted our company to have a positive impact on the team, clients and society as a whole.

These days, more people are increasingly looking to businesses to lead on social issues. B Corps have shown that business can be done differently. By becoming a B Corp, we’ve joined a community of businesses that care about balancing people, planet and profit, and who want to make a positive impact.

You can click here, more on Luminary’s B Corp journey.

Luminary has been appointed as the digital agency for UNICEF Australia, further consolidating the agency’s standing in the charity and not-for-profit sector.

UNICEF joins Save the Children, Cancer Council Australia, Fred Hollows Foundation, Heart Foundation, Our Watch and The Shrine of Remembrance on Luminary’s list of high-profile charity and NGO clients.

Established in 1946, UNICEF is the United Nations Children’s Fund, a humanitarian agency that works to ensure every child has access to clean water, food, healthcare, education and a safe place to grow up. For more than 70 years, UNICEF has worked to promote and protect children’s rights on a global scale. UNICEF Australia was formed in 1966 to support that mission.

As UNICEF’s digital agency, Luminary will be supporting multiple projects, including an upgrade of the organisation’s flagship site unicef.org.au and The GoodWILL Project, an initiative that connects people wanting to leave a gift to UNICEF in their will with solicitors who provide their services free of charge. Luminary will also initially be tasked with developing a multi-year digital roadmap for the charity.

CEO Marty Drill said:

We are absolutely thrilled to welcome UNICEF Australia into the fold here at Luminary. The work the organisation is doing in Australia and abroad is so vital. We are very honoured to have been given this opportunity to support that work. It gives our team members a real sense of purpose to be working with an organisation that is making a difference in the lives of so many. With our experience in the charity sector, we’re in a position to really bring a great depth of knowledge to UNICEF to help it achieve its goals.

Luminary was selected as the digital agency for UNICEF Australia following a competitive pitch process. According to UNICEF Australia CEO Tony Stuart, it was a combination of not-for-profit experience and credentials in Kentico – the charity’s chosen content management system – that led to the decision to choose Luminary.

UNICEF Australia CEO Tony Stuart said:

We’re really excited by the opportunity to work with Luminary. The agency has unparalleled experience with Kentico and it also has an impressive track record of achieving great results for charities. Even in the initial stages of working together, Luminary has solved challenges for us that previously seemed insurmountable. We’re very much looking forward to seeing where this partnership will take us.

As Luminary approaches 20 years in operation, they tap into the memories and motivations of those team members who has been with them for a decade or more.

In an industry with average staff tenure of 24 months, you’d be pretty-hard pressed to find anyone who’s been at the same agency for more than 10 years. Well, Luminary is proud to say that they have eight of them, which refers to 15% of the whole team.

As the agency prepares to celebrate their 20th birthday, they decided to send them out for a celebratory lunch and quiz them on what it is that keeps them here, how the industry – and their role in it – has changed, and what have been their favourite memories.

Without further ado, let us introduce you to Luminary’s ‘Long-termers’…

Chris Coppin, Solutions Architect – 10yrs

Roles held: Developer, Senior Developer

Best memory: The music battles way back when we used WinAmp were “fun”, with the diversity of music tastes in the office. I used to change the song remotely from FPH (a client site) to something awful and crank up the volume. I’ve not told many people that. Lol!

What is it that’s kept you here for 10+ years? Challenging work, great people, being treated well, and being trusted.

What was the office culture like when you started? Not that different from what it is now, really. We had music being played on an old PC via WinAmp and everyone sat pretty close to each other (producers, devs, etc). It was fun, but we worked hard. Pretty similar to how I’d describe Luminary now, but without the multitude of remote locations.

How has the agency changed since you started? It’s much bigger now. We didn’t really have “Front-End” and “Back-End” Developers, just “Developers”. We no longer sell $1000 websites.

How has the technology landscape changed? The way we work, and what we are producing has changed a lot in the last 10 years. iPhone came out, which fundamentally changed the way websites were built. First there was the wave of having a desktop site and a separate mobile site, eg: www.kidspot.com.au and m.kidspot.com.au, then came responsive with set breakpoints for iPhone portrait and landscape mode, then fully responsive. The need to pretty much specialise in either BED or FED development. CDNs started to become a thing, followed by full Cloud services and Azure.

Proudest achievement? There is no one thing that is my proudest achievement. I think I’m most proud of producing consistent, quality work, of being reliable and becoming a trusted advisor to any client I’ve dealt with.

Carolyn Battin, Training Manager – 12 yrs

Roles held: Project Manager, Training Manager

Best memory: Any of our annual karaoke nights could qualify for my funniest times here. Witnessing Adam and Andy’s dance moves and singing has made me realise that in an alternate life they could have formed a pretty killer boy band. [Ed’s note: They have both, in fact, been in (separate) boy bands in their misspent youth.]

What is it that’s kept you here for 10+ years? Karaoke and free brekkie.

What was the office culture like when you started? The office culture was everyone working in one room with one shared music system. The fear was that certain team members might take over the playlist and only play musicals.

How has the agency changed since you started? We’re now in a giant multi-room, multi-location business and everyone is wearing headphones.

How has the technology landscape changed? I can remember a time when Marty used to make fun of younger colleagues who used Twitter. He would openly yell “Twitter will NEVER last!”

Proudest achievement? “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” I’m proud of the times I remembered to keep my mouth shut.

Sarah Dam, Front End Developer – 14 yrs

Roles held: Maintenance Coordinator, Front End Developer

Best memory: Publicly shareable you say!??? [Ed’s note: Radio silence from Sarah…]

What is it that’s kept you here for 10+ years? It really is the people. I love the culture and the people I work with. It has always been such a great place to be.

What was the office culture like when you started? Although the company was much smaller, it still had a similar work hard, produce quality work, but have fun vibe.

How has the agency changed since you started? Mostly in size. I think I worked with around 12 other colleagues when I started, so that is very different. The guy behind me worked on FPH, I worked across many projects… that isn’t so different!

How has the technology landscape changed? We used to make our own CMS and all of the data (for all websites) was in a single database. Flash animation, especially if it was interactive, was the thing to have!

Proudest achievement? Being around so long and constantly keeping up with technology for 14 years feels like a big achievement. Taking time out to have kids then slotting back in to a different developer stream was a very hard thing to do at the time, but I love my role in FED.

Andrew (‘Raddo’) Radburnd, CIO – 14 yrs

Roles held: I started out as a Support Technician, which in a small company meant you did everything you could help on – receptionist, project manager, help desk, finance, accounts… (I’m pretty sure Fab still thinks I’m in control of paying his wages.) As the company grew, so did my positions.

Best memory: Have you heard the story of the TVPhone? [All will be revealed by Fab, below…]

What is it that’s kept you here for 10+ years? Great culture, great team and technology changes so much and so quickly that every day is a new challenge and a complicated problem to be solved.

What was the office culture like when you started? It was still a start-up mentality. I first met the team when they had just moved into their first “real” office (i.e. not someone’s lounge room) in Elizabeth Street. The office was bare and everyone sat on exercise balls. Most of the team were uni students and part-time and people would be in the office all hours of the night.

How has the agency changed since you started? When I started about 50 percent of the team had the first name ‘Andrew’. That percentage has reduced significantly over the years and not all for the better! Core values are the same; we have just grown in size and wisdom and maybe our stamina at the team end of year functions has lowered a little bit. Some things haven’t changed, we are still all excited and passionate about technology and where it’s heading next. Oh and we rebranded!

How has the technology landscape changed? Nothing we use today existed and, from an IT point of view, nothing was compatible with each other, which meant you spent a lot more time trying to work out why things didn’t work than actually improving things. The rise of Cloud services and Cloud computing has leveled the technology playing field.

Anyone can access services without having to have enterprise-scale IT teams to run them. This, and the DevOps movement, have meant that deploying a site is no longer a “copy files and cross your fingers” task, which usually took way too long, followed by trying to work out what went wrong!

Proudest achievement? Seeing the company grow and seeing the clients grow also. We’ve worked with some clients that have changed their industry and also people’s lives, like Royal Commissions.

Adam Griffith, MD – 17 yrs

Roles held: I started as the part-time bookkeeper while at uni doing my actuarial and finance degree (I’d done a few subjects of accounting in my first year). I then started to manage clients and website projects and then took on the General Manager role in 2004. In 2007 I moved to the MD role I am in now.

Best memory: Our 15 year celebration was a lot of fun, including a rather large bottle of Veuve that we surprised the team with. The bottle still takes pride of place in our conference room with all the signatures of everyone who was with us at the time.

What is it that’s kept you here for 10+ years? The team culture and our ongoing commitment to getting better and better at what we do.

What was the office culture like when you started? We had a very small team so we were all mates. It was a fun and exciting time.

How has the agency changed since you started? As the agency, the directors, and long-term staff members have grown up, the culture has grown up too. But the essence of Luminary hasn’t changed. We’re still people-first, focused on quality, and passionate about what we do.

How has the technology landscape changed? It’s a cliche but change is the only constant. The technology landscape has been in constant change since the early 2000s. Back then, content management systems were in their infancy, social media didn’t really exist, and Flash was still a thing. The commoditisation of CMSs was probably the first major technology change that impacted us in a big way. Then it was mobiles and responsive design. More recently the (very positive) focus on the agile way of working, as well as customer and user experience are changing the way we do things from a technology and people perspective.

Proudest achievement? The rebrand to Luminary was definitely a big achievement for us all. It was more than just a name change. It was the culmination and embodiment of the journey of growth we’d been on for many years. Other highlights include: helping Kidspot grow to become the leading parenting site in Australia, helping Snooze transition from a basic website to full-blown e-commerce, and supporting a number of the Royal Commissions in Australia.

Andy Thompson, CTO – 17 yrs

Roles held: Most of them… Back End Developer, Front End Developer (since before that was a thing), Tech Lead, Tech Director, Strategy Director, Creative Technologist, Resource Manager, QA Lead, CTO… Basically everything except designer.

Best memory: So many… but here’s one no-one else probably mentioned. I still remember how much fun the end of year function was when we all went go-karting, but the best part was when Marty won, yet the official record had his name as “Mary”. Sorry Marty, but I still remember people’s reactions and chuckle about it!

What is it that’s kept you here for 10+ years? The industry has changed so much, the company has changed so much, and my role has changed so much… even the name of the company changed recently! It doesn’t really feel like I’ve actually been in the same job for that long… because I haven’t.

What was the office culture like when you started? It was much more of a startup culture. The original founders were all still there, and made up more than half of the company. There were only a couple of employees, and we all worked out of a single room at the top of an apartment building in Latrobe St. But even then we had great monthly team events, and very similar values to now.

How has the agency changed since you started? Well it’s about 1000% of the size for starters… While we’re still designing things and writing code, the types of projects we do and the services we offer have changed a lot over a couple of decades. The roles people fill have changed to suit a much larger organisation servicing much larger and more mature clients. But deep down, the values, culture and objectives are still the same.

How has the technology landscape changed? There’s barely anything from those days still around! When I started, Google still hadn’t gone public, Internet Explorer 6 was brand new (and frankly AWESOME) and had close to 100% market share as Netscape Navigator was in its death throes. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Google Chrome, Firefox, all of these didn’t exist.

Smartphones were years away – many people didn’t have a mobile phone at all, and if they did it was probably a Nokia 3310. We typically built things using Classic ASP (.asp pages), maybe with an odd DLL built in Visual Basic if it needed to be REALLY advanced, and often powered by a Microsoft Access database in the back end.

We had a Dell server under one of the desks in the office, endearingly named “COW”. .NET 1.0 had only just been released so no one was using it yet. Web design was typically locked to 780px wide to ensure it fit on an 800×600 screen, although huge 1024×768 screens were emerging. The Cloud was where The Rain came from and was generally not compatible with computers.

Proudest achievement? It’s a while ago now, but we helped a little startup called Kidspot (built using that awesome tech stack described above) become the largest parenting site in Australia, and eventually it sold in 2011 to a large media corporation for a reported $45 million. We didn’t see a cent of those millions of course, but we were immensely proud of what we’d helped them create!

Fab Ferrante, Senior Designer – 19 yrs

Roles held: In the beginning I was both a designer and front end developer. I would design my sites in Photoshop and build html sites using Dreamweaver. Now I’m a Senior Designer and focus my attention on delivering great user experiences and beautiful interfaces.

Best memory: One of the funniest memories I have was Marty returning to the office after a trip from Thailand. He was telling us about his adventures and was also very excited to share with us the new iPhone he had just bought while overseas. They weren’t available in Australia yet so we were very anxious to see what they were like.

When we saw the box we immediately knew that this was no iPhone. The box read ‘iPhone/TV’ and when we opened the box we saw the phone had a massive antenna sticking out of the top. It seemed as though he had been duped, and in fact all he bought was a glorified radio!

What is it that’s kept you here for 10+ years? I think wanting to be part of something from the ground up and contribute to its success has made me want to stay here. I get great satisfaction being part of such a fabulous team and making sure I can support them in their future achievements.

What was the office culture like when you started? I think we have always had a positive work culture. There was always a concern about the happiness and satisfaction of others. We would have regular team events to help build team bonding.

How has the agency changed since you started? We have grown quite considerably from when we first started. We now have a number of employees working from a number of different locations in Australia and overseas. We have provided people with the flexibility to work remotely and have embraced video hangouts. And we had a brand change.

How has the technology landscape changed? It has changed quite a bit. We now use Slack for most internal conversations. Previously we relied on email. Sketch is now the design program of choice, whereas previously it had been Photoshop. We have a work management system (Accelo) to track our productivity. Previously we didn’t really use one. Google apps are used heavily in our day-to-day activities.

Proudest achievement? I think it’s nice being acknowledged over the years with some awards for the work I have done.

Marty Drill, CEO – 20 yrs

Roles held: Founder and CEO. I sat with a friend from uni and compared business plan ideas. Google had just launched and my friend believed that digital would change the future and so we went with his business plan and the agency was born. We formed the team in March 1999 and officially launched on 1 July 1999.

Best memory: We had a penthouse apartment on Latrobe St that had a glass office on the roof. We had the entire roof to ourselves and we would play basketball with a large fitness ball. The door to the glass office was the net and one day, a huge block from one of the team stopped the goal. We gasped as the ball went sailing over the edge of the 17 story building. We never saw that ball again.

What is it that’s kept you here for 10+ years? A belief in people and a belief that technology can change business, the way we interact, and the human experience.

What was the office culture like when you started? We were a small team and we were highly enthusiastic and even more naive. We worked hard and looked after each other.

How has the agency changed since you started? After 20 years, it has changed dramatically, as you would expect. Consider how far the internet has come in that 20 years – we have transformed with it. The technology that is available to us now is remarkable. The team has grown to over 50 people and multiple locations. I think the essence of who we are has remained, while our spirit of enquiry and thirst for problem solving has grown.

How has the technology landscape changed? We started with a dial-up modem at 14400 kbs. Now people complain when they get under 50mb. The technology has fundamentally changed, from the desktop, to the laptop, to mobile, to voice. The intersection of digital and marketing and business is actually the biggest change.

What has been your proudest achievement? The launch of the Final Report of 2009 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission in 2010, which was downloaded over 100,000 times in the first day. We served 400GB in the first hour and didn’t have an outage. The work that went into the Final Report was extraordinary. With such a high loss of life and property, along with the impacts on the community, the context for our work was clear.

Digital agency Get Started has marked its 20th year of operation with a new agency name – Luminary. The name change has been accompanied by the unveiling of a complete brand overhaul.

The rebrand comes hot on the heels of a number of notable new client wins for the agency, including beyondblue, Bakers Delight, William Angliss Institute and Melbourne Business School.

Ownership will remain unchanged and the agency will continue to service existing clients, including Crown Casino, Melbourne Airport, Clipsal by Schneider Electric, Metricon, Fred Hollows Foundation and Save the Children.

CEO Marty Drill said:

With nearly two decades of history behind the name Get Started, the decision to rename the agency was not taken lightly. But the reality is the name Get Started no longer represents who we are. The time has come to have a name that reflects our current position in the market.

CTO and Kentico MVP Andy Thompson added:

Back in 1999, the kinds of people we were generally working with were trying to get their first website going, or exploring the idea of e-commerce, so the name Get Started made a lot of sense. Now our typical client has already been on the internet for a long time – they’re not getting started anymore.

Over the last three years, the agency has expanded from a single office in Melbourne to include offices in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Albury-Wodonga and Bali.

There are now more than 45 people working across the six offices. Hundreds of agency names were considered as part of the rebranding process.

Managing Director Adam Griffith explains:

It was the dual meaning of Luminary – ‘expert knowledge’ and ‘bright’ – that really made it stand out for us. To be luminary is to deliver something that’s bright, impactful and makes the human experience brighter.

Please visit Luminary for more information.