Taking Play Seriously: Inside Our Dev Days

For a number of years now, we've been setting aside one day a month to down tools and make some room to play. A day for everyone at Buff to step away from their usual work and explore something they're interested in.

Sometimes that means learning a new tool or testing a technique we’ve been meaning to try. Sometimes it means developing something that could make its way into our client work further down the line. And sometimes it means making something completely pointless.

All are encouraged. As Myungeun, our Creative Team Lead, puts it, it's a “creative play-day without pressure.” Which pretty much sums it up.

So, what actually happens on Dev Day?

We start the morning by getting everyone around a table to share what they’re thinking of working on. There’s no set brief and no expectation that everyone needs to come away with a polished piece of work. It’s more about giving ourselves the time to follow an idea and see where it takes us.

From there, we get stuck in - following ideas, trying things out. With a studio full of different skills, interests and personalities, the results tend to be pretty varied.

Learning by making.

Some Dev Days start with something we know we’d like to get better at. Motion Designer Nick has used Dev Day to experiment with tools like Cavalry, making things purely for fun while getting to grips with techniques that could eventually feed back into client projects.

It's an opportunity to explore tools and techniques without the pressure of needing to use them on a live project. As Mark, Motion Designer, puts it:

“Buff is essentially investing a whole day in me developing and trying something I wouldn’t necessarily get time to try on the real client project.”

It takes some of the pressure out of learning. Instead of figuring something out for the first time with a deadline attached, there’s room to get things wrong, try another way and work out what the tool can actually do.

Sometimes, it works the other way around.

Dan, our Senior Motion Designer, took a 2D clock character from one of our client projects and gave it new life in 3D after the project had wrapped. A chance to take something familiar, play with it in a completely different way and see where it went. Because why not?

And sometimes, we just make stuff.

Not everything needs to be tied to a client project. Sometimes, it's simply about seeing what your subconscious decides to cook up that day. So far, we've had spinning apples, heads falling off plinths… and some jumping burgers. Because, well, why not?

We do normally break up Dev Day with a team lunch, which quite often involves burgers. Whether that had any influence on Dan’s creative direction, we can’t say for certain. Sometimes making something because it makes you happy is reason enough.

Dev Day isn't just for the creative team.

But Dev Day isn’t just about making things. For our production team, development might look completely different. It could be learning something new, researching an area they're interested in or spending uninterrupted time developing a skill that supports the way they work.

As Kathleen, our Studio Manager, puts it:

“An opportunity to spend time exploring and learning separate from the day to day work.”

There’s no prescribed version of what development has to look like. What matters is having the space to do it.

Different people make different things.

Give everyone the same day and you quickly get a reminder of all the different people who make up Buff. Different strengths, different interests, different personalities and very different creative outlets.

Sharing it means we learn from each other too. Someone might discover a tool that another person ends up using on a project. Someone might approach a problem in a way the rest of us hadn't considered. It's as much about developing individually as it is about understanding the people we work alongside a little better.

That feels pretty important to us. Our belief that we can make better work by making work better means giving people the time and space to keep learning, experimenting and occasionally making something a bit weird.

See you soon!

Dev Day gives us a regular excuse to stay curious and silly. To learn something, make something, try something or follow an idea without needing to know exactly where it's going.

As Dan, our Senior Motion Designer, puts it:

“It’s a good way to keep us motivated to learn new things and push our skills forward.”

We've been doing these for a while, but we haven't been particularly good at showing you what happens. So, we thought it was about time we unzipped the archives.

We'll be regularly sharing a little look at what the Buff team has been getting up to on our Dev Days – the useful bits, the weird bits and everything in between. And who knows – maybe one day we'll let you set the brief. 👀