Most companies'"About" page sucks. Composed of tiled mosaics of awkwardly grinning executives who clearly don't want their pictures taken, and broken up with some insipid verbiage written by a company stooge with a penchant for empty buzzwords, the average "About" page doesn't tell you very much about the people you're considering doing business with.
Cornett thought there was a better way to get across what it's all about. Taking inspiration from the Internet's all-abiding love for things organized neatly, the Kentucky-based design and branding firm asked their employees to come to work with their 10 essential items: the objects they just couldn't live without. After photographing what their employees brought in, they made the resulting gallery the company's corporate "About" page.
"A photograph of a person doesn't really tell you much about them, let alone a company," Cornett's Whit Hiler tells Co.Design. "A person's essentials tell you so much more about them: what they enjoy doing, who they enjoy doing it with, what their hobbies are, what their families are like, and so on."
Cornett's employees chose items that, wonderfully, revealed their personal obsessions. Some people brought in football and baseball jerseys; others arrived with electric guitars. For some, a jar of Jif peanut butter is just as essential as a copy of the Beatles'Rubber Soul; for others, essential items include autographed photographs of Adam West and ebony Cthulhu statues. And not every item is an object, per se: more than a few Cornett employees brought in their partners, children, or pets.
Because a company is, ultimately, the sum of its individual employees, Hiler thinks that these photographs say more at a glance than a mission statement or organization chart ever could. It's a unique palette of the personalities that makes Cornett what it is.
Check out the Cornett 'About' page here.