Heya,
this is Harry, checking in from the village. It’s been a while that we published an update: Unfortunately we haven’t managed to write a newsletter in quite some time and we also missed to share a few announcements earlier this year. So we’ve prepared a round-up of 23 tiny updates, spread over two posts. This is part one, focused on our project work. Ready? Let’s catch up!
034: Newsflash—what we’ve been working on
A new brand and website for Media Lab Bayern
Earlier this year, we worked with Media Lab Bayern on a new brand and website relaunch, retiring their old complicated CMS for an entirely new site, based on Craft CMS. The reception has been great—everything is easier to find, more connected and much faster. By the way, Media Lab also offers free co-working seats in Munich!
Publix opens the doors
Our long-time project partner Publix has finally opened the doors of their new home for journalism and democracy in Berlin-Neukölln. They threw a big opening conference and have a series of amazing events lined up until the end of the year, e.g. the Publix Thursdays. We’ve been by their side for more than two years and it’s really special to see the building come to life. What a journey!
We continue to support the Sovereign Tech Fund
Last year we launched Sovereign Tech Fund’s new website and brand and we’re happy to announce that we won another contract with them, deepening our collaboration throughout 2025 and 2026. We admire their mission and work, supporting open-source projects financially, thereby strengthening the digital infrastructure we all depend on daily. They also just celebrated their second birthday. Congrats!
The STF team also recently commissioned a report about bug bounty programs, which we got to design for print, together with the excellent Nina Bender. The author Dr. Ryan Ellis said “the design of this report puts all my other publications to shame”. We’ll take that!
Media Forward Fund: strengthening independent journalism
There’s a new fund in town, with the mission to support independent journalism, and therefore democracy: The Media Forward Fund has the backing of an impressive list of initiators and is led by Martin Kotynek. They launched their program this year and we’ve been involved from the start, working on their branding, website, presentations, business cards—the whole package.
Deepening our collaboration with Youth Policy Labs
After launching the new brand and website for YouthPolicy.org, we’ve continued to work together on another ambitious project: We can’t share what it is at this point, but we did conduct quite a few interviews and research, then designed an interactive prototype and did some code explorations. This was only the first phase and we hope there’ll be more funding to build upon these findings.
Village One × Dekoder: going to Marl
Our project with Dekoder, war.dekoder.org, was nominated for a Grimme Online Award, which is a big honor and recognition. A few of us and the Dekoder team then went to the German city of Marl to attend the ceremony. In the end, other amazing projects won the prestigious awards, but it was an honor to be listed among them and celebrate together!
My Country Talks: countless conversations
A project that did win a Grimme award (a few years back) is My Country Talks and they’ve been busy this year, organizing Deutschland Spricht, Europe Talks and numerous other events. Shout-out to Sara Cooper for pulling all the strings behind the scenes! We’ve been busy maintaining the software and technical infrastructure powering these events, making sure it all stays secure, performant and accessible, while also adding new features.
New project partners and collaborators
We’re honored to share that a bunch of new organizations decided to team up with us over the last months: Among them are PLATTE Berlin, Correctiv, ZEIT ONLINE, Friendship Systems and the Fritz Bauer Forum. We also entered a pitch / public tender together with Florida and briefly collaborated with the impeccable Katharina Köth.
Putting our heads together with a group of climate activists
In summer we were connected with a group of climate activists who are determined to bring a bold and complex new media project into the world. We initially thought there might be a way to finance it through the new “Nachhaltig Wirken” funding program from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. So we spent a few days together, mulling over different approaches to the funding application, but sadly had to abort in the end, realizing the program wasn’t a good match, after all. Bummer, because we loved spending time with them, learning a lot ourselves.
New on our website: testimonials from our project partners
We’ve started collecting short statements from our project partners, outlining what it’s like to collaborate with us. You can find an initial selection here. Thanks go out to everyone who contributed a quote! Here’s a taste:
I could easily say at least 300 nice things about you, but I'll make it short and sweet: It is an absolute pleasure working with you.
Right back at you, Andreas! Here’s another one from Frank:
Eine Lobeshymne an Village One: Kreativität, innovatives Denken, geballtes Know-how, Schnelligkeit, Empathie und ganz viel Spaß! Ihr arbeitet mit Herzblut, und das merkt man.
Aww 🥰
Last, but not least: Let’s team up?
New projects have been slow to materialize lately, so we still have some design/dev capacity this year. If you need help with your digital products, branding or website, then do reach out—we’d be very happy to discuss a potential collaboration. You can book a meeting here or send us an email to hello@village.one.
Also: Our kind of business runs on recommendations, so if you hear about a fitting project, then we’d be eternally grateful for an introduction. 🤝
That’s it for today—part 2 will be published in a few days and contain everything else that happened, outside of project work.
See you around,
Harry