Who We Are
aka ‘Forrest doesn’t live here anymore’
Say This Say That was founded in 2005 by an Evergreen graduate named Forrest Peaker. After exhausting what Evergreen had to offer in web design courses, he began doing independent study contracts to learn more about graphic design and web development and eventually began taking on projects around town, kick starting a significant change in the Olympia web design community.
At the time, web design in Olympia was rather meek. Larger businesses and small entrepreneurs paid top dollar to print designers who understood little about web design or the web’s intricacies. Instead, the small business owner was stuck with a non-standards compliant, table based layout that was neither flexible nor forward thinking. This left clients with the only option of paying time and again for minor adjustments and simple text changes. Forrest knew this was backwards and looked for solutions to put the power back into the clients’ hands.
In 2007, Say This Say That grew with the inclusion of Micah Gilman. Forrest and Micah met when Forrest took a part time design job for a company where Micah was doing design and sales. By August, the two were friends, and saw complimentary skills in each other that would transition nicely into a business partnership some day. That time came sooner than expected, as both designers went full-time freelance on the same day later that month! Coincidence? No, but that’s a different story.
With aspirations of glory and a knack for web standards, the new Say This Say That set out to pioneer a new Olympia web design community. The first month was rocky— Micah blanketed potential clients with proposals and Forrest worked on saythissaythat.com and one lonely MySQL job. Home base was Forrest’s bedroom.
Things have changed quite a bit in the community and in web design at large. STST is not the only shop offering web design with content management systems. The team has embraced print and logo design and have developed a number of e-commerce sites. STST now inhabits a rad office on Legion Way and grew to include the web genius and Evergreen graduate, James Franzen.
2010 is off to amazing start for Say This Say That with new clients and loads of web, logo and identity projects in the works. 2010 also marks a change in operations. As of late 2009, Micah and James are navigating the waters alone as Forrest pursues other projects. Forrest can always be contacted here: peaker@slowclouds.com
One thing hasn’t changed, we still make affordable design solutions for the creative community that are easy to use, update, and enjoy. Some may consider this alliance a form of ‘synergy’, but we still prefer to call it ‘design Voltron‘.
Say This Say That 2010
Micah Gilman – Designer/Developer/Marketing/Sales: Contact
James Franzen – Designer/Developer: Contact