The Challenge

Ronik had used a variety of CMS products over the years to manage our clients' content, to varying degrees of success. Each one seemed to lack something essential for our purposes. Each of our clients had different needs and asks, and our designs were unique to suit. However, most products we experimented with demanded we conform to a more rigid structure than we wanted. Getting around their rules was cumbersome. The rest were not editor-friendly, or were so open and complicated to set up that they weren't useful for our projects with quick turnarounds. 

Ronik created TakeShape to empower us and other design and development firms to create content-managed products quickly, efficiently, and with minimum overhead.

The Form Builder

We wanted to make it easy for designers to create work without worrying about being limited by data, and we wanted front-end developers to quickly create matching data structures without being boxed in by rules and limitations. However, we didn't want to lose the UI and ease-of-use that content editors loved with bulkier products.

To that end, we anchored TakeShape with a form builder that made it easy for developers and editors alike to quickly drag-and-drop all necessary fields and their configuration in moments, instantly generating a useable GraphQL API.

Knowledgable, Approachable, Powerful

From the start of our work on the product we had a brand persona in mind, catering to the personalities and needs of our three primary audiences. 

We'd seen products that were impressive in features and scope, but were laden with industry language and crudely or starkly designed. We wanted to have personality and let our own quirks shine through, but we wanted to make sure TakeShape was treated as seriously as its offering deserved and not let design get in the way of a smooth and effortless user experience. 

The Result

I've been dog-fooding TakeShape since it first became a working service, and over the last few years it has only become a more powerful, elegant and essential tool in our utility belt. I'm so excited with what it will become and so proud to have seen other users  begin to utilize it for their own projects.