SKKY Partners is a new investment firm founded by Kim Kardashian and Jay Sammons. SKKY needed to connect to both businesses looking for investors and people who want to join or have interest in their work. Since SKKY was new, there was little to show other than their innovative mindset and ideas.
Highly crafted branding, design and motion are how we uniquely shaped the presence of SKKY. A firm's site has very little content on it, so the design, the detail and the finish carry most of the impression.
Accessibility was part of the same standard. For a US firm it is a legal requirement, so the site had to meet it properly and still be the most elegant thing in its category.
The Case
Capturing the essence of SKKY Partners in a web experience
Our Process
We treat your challenge like our own, shape ideas into a clear experience strategy and craft every detail to create experiences that create lasting connection.
“Own”
We treat your challenge like our own, bringing expertise and perspective to make every idea stronger.
We started with what this site has to prove. With this little on the page, every detail is visible and the craft is key.
Our Perspective: Elegance is restraint with excellent timing
In this category the temptation is to add weight: bigger type, heavier transitions, more statement as that's what the rest is doing. What reads as prestige is a small number of movements executed just right.
So we spent most time on easings, interactive storytelling and how things come to rest.
Our Vision: Motion and accessibility as equals
These two usually get treated as opponents, one added at the end and the other cut at the end. We built both in from the first explorations, so the motion sits on a structure that a keyboard and a screen reader can read cleanly.
Our expertise: A small site built like a platform
A firm's site starts with a handful of pages and then grows: portfolio companies, news, team, positions. So we built a Dynamic Templating system on top of the Headless CMS DatoCMS with NextJS (React), which means new sections arrive as content and the firm can keep extending the site itself.
“Shape”
We shape ideas into a clear experience strategy, built around your audience and your objectives.
The plan: Explore motion, design and interaction together, early
Our teams worked in the same exploration, testing motion against design against interaction before anything was fixed. On a site where the feel is the product, that is the only way to know whether an idea holds up.
From there the structure: a scalable content system underneath, a small set of page templates on top, and an interaction language that behaves the same on a phone and on a desktop.
Mobile got treated as its own design problem, borrowing the patterns people already trust from iOS.
Strategic choices
Accessibility first, motion on top. Retrofitting accessibility means changing the structure, and that is where the elegance goes.
Templating from the start. The firm will publish things nobody thought of at launch, and they should not have to wait for us to do it.
App patterns on mobile. Drag to close, light and dark mode, full animation on both platforms. Most of this audience meets the firm on a phone between meetings.
Hosting sized for the worst day. A firm attached to two well known names gets traffic and attention that a normal B2B site never sees.
“Craft”
Using experience strategy, design, motion and code; we craft every detail to create an experience that feels effortless and leaves a lasting impression.
Design
WØRKS led the design and we worked into it closely. On a site this restrained, the decisions that matter are the ones between the designs: how a layout behaves halfway through a transition, what a focus state looks like when everything around it is this quiet, and how the page holds together when somebody has doubled the text size.
Motion
Seamless transitions and micro interactions, tuned for sophistication. Every movement has a reason to exist, and anything decorative came out. Transitions settle cleanly and then hold. Reduced motion is respected throughout, which costs nothing here because the layout never relied on the animation to make sense.
Code
A Dynamic Templating system on DatoCMS with NextJS and React, so the content team can build and extend pages without a release.
WebGL and CSS animation throughout, with Framer Motion where it earns its place, and the scroll animations running on our own system.
Accessibility measures tested and applied across the site, from screen reader compatibility to keyboard navigation and assistive technology support.
Hosted on Vercel, which handles the load and the security, so a spike in attention costs nobody a phone call.
Mobile Smoothness
To simulate an elegant app-like feeling to the mobile website, we implemented the best patterns from both iOS and Web apps.
Drag to close menu's, light-and-dark mode and fully functioning animations on both mobile and desktop.
“...by combining and experimenting with motion, design and interaction early on in the exploration of the project; we allowed every teammember to thrive and deliver the perfect experience for SKKY Partners and her clients...”
Mees Rutten, Founder @Merlin Studio
Results & Ongoing Partnership
SKKY Partners was nominated for Awwwards, the Lovie Awards and The FWA's. The website hosts many visitors, gets traction from news sites and is often used in design inspiration directories.
We look back on a positive collaboration that gave many insights during our retrospective.
Scope
Result
SKKY Partners got a site that carries the prestige of the firm and stays open to everyone, with a content system they can keep building on as they grow.
The site draws steady traffic, gets picked up by news sites and keeps appearing in design inspiration directories, which for a firm this new is reach it did not have to buy.
It was nominated for Awwwards, the Lovie Awards and the FWA.
Yes, as long as you build the page first and animate it afterwards. If the page already works with a keyboard and reads properly to a screen reader before any motion exists, the animation becomes a layer on top that can be softened or switched off without breaking anything. The problems start when the motion is the only thing carrying meaning. Then listen to what people have told their device. Somebody who has asked for less motion should get simple changes of state, focus outlines need designing like everything else, and anything that happens on scroll needs an equivalent for somebody moving through with a keyboard. As an example, the website for SKKY Partners, the investment firm founded by Kim Kardashian and Jay Sammons, was built this way, with accessibility applied across the site and the motion layered on top. It was built by Merlin Studio, a digital studio from Amsterdam, with design studio WØRKS.
Timing, mostly. Prestige reads as control, which in practice means few movements, plenty of space, type that was chosen with care and transitions that settle rather than bounce. Anything that draws attention to the animation itself works against you. Then take things away. In this category the last round of work is usually removing, and the version that feels expensive is the one with three considered moments in it. As an example, the website for SKKY Partners, the investment firm founded by Kim Kardashian and Jay Sammons, was built on that principle, with restrained motion carrying the prestige of the firm. It was built by Merlin Studio, a digital studio from Amsterdam, with design studio WØRKS.
Use the gestures people already trust. Drag something down to dismiss it, sheets that come up from the bottom, movement that matches the phone's own feel, and light and dark following whatever the device is set to. These are learned habits, so nothing needs explaining. Then keep both versions equal. The usual shortcut is to switch the animation off on phones to keep things quick, and phones are where most people are, so it pays to design motion that runs properly there in the first place. As an example, the website for SKKY Partners, the investment firm founded by Kim Kardashian and Jay Sammons, borrows the best patterns from iOS and web apps, with drag to close menus, light and dark mode and full animation on both mobile and desktop. It was built by Merlin Studio, a digital studio from Amsterdam.
Describe the content rather than the pages. If sections are defined as types that can be filled in, a new page becomes something the client publishes themselves. Handmade pages go live quickly and then turn into a queue of small requests that never ends. Put that on a content system people actually like using, because a flexible setup nobody wants to open gets worked around within a few months. As an example, the website for SKKY Partners, the investment firm founded by Kim Kardashian and Jay Sammons, runs on a templating system built on DatoCMS, so the firm can add pages as the portfolio and the team grow. It was built by Merlin Studio, a digital studio from Amsterdam.
It is a legal question before it is a design one. US companies are generally expected to meet the WCAG guidelines at AA level, and the practical work is colour contrast, being able to use everything with a keyboard, sensible focus, correct labels for screen readers, alternative text for images, respecting motion preferences and labelling forms properly. You check it with tools and then by hand. Doing it while you build costs a fraction of doing it afterwards. Fixing it later usually means changing the structure, which means changing the design, which is why it belongs in the first week. As an example, on the website for SKKY Partners, the investment firm founded by Kim Kardashian and Jay Sammons, the accessibility work was built in from the start and tested throughout, so the site meets the standard and keeps the motion it was designed around. It was built by Merlin Studio, a digital studio from Amsterdam, with design studio WØRKS.
Six to twelve weeks for a firm site with a real content system, custom motion and accessibility done properly. There are not many pages, so the time goes into the craft and the review rounds. What moves the date is who decides. One decision-maker and a fixed set of copy gets you to the short end. Copy arriving late, or approval spread across several people, adds weeks without adding anything to the work. As an example, the website for SKKY Partners, the investment firm founded by Kim Kardashian and Jay Sammons, was built by Merlin Studio, a digital studio from Amsterdam, with design studio WØRKS.
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