As an award-winning Webflow agency, at Edgar Allan our mission is to continue to push Webflow forward — and share what we learn along the way. That’s exactly what we did with Letter Run, which earned us the Webflow's 2022 Technical Achievement Award at this year’s Webflow Conf.

Sure, our 3D scavenger hunt is pretty neat. But we think the better reasons we won this award are:

• Extensibility: Letter Run demonstrates the massive, flexible potential of Webflow. You really can build anything with it. 
• Collaboration and Community: This project was complex and required the talents of nearly a dozen people, from developers and coders to writers, animators, designers and UX folks. It’s a testament to what can happen when we all work together in the platform.

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And a HUGE “thank you” goes to…

All of you! 

We didn’t build Letter Run alone. In fact, at Edgar Allan, we have a saying: “Everyone in the pool!” (Literally — have you seen our little 3D Edgar character jump in the pool?!) That being said, our first goal became helping everyone — our developers, designers, writers, and others — get in that pool and work from their strengths in what we like to call “swim lanes” of collaboration.

Webflow gives us a great opportunity to do this: by allowing us to scale what is possible by giving people clear areas of influence and the ability to make an impact on a final product.

Our designers began by crafting Edgar’s world. Our writers jumped in to define the “why” and the “what.” Developers got going in their various tools… and we got somewhere pretty cool pretty quickly.

The real innovation here however was to redefine what it means to build in Webflow, and to include more people in that process than just a Webflow designer. We found that we can accomplish more, together, when everyone is able to get in the pool and work from their strengths. Tools like Webflow help make this happen by stretching the limits of possibility.

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Letter Run by the numbers

By the time we finally launched Letter Run, there was a huge level of anticipation. Within the first 24 hours, our initial Tweet unveiling the finished scavenger hunt for the first time was viewed a staggering 60,000 times! With 10,000 video impressions and 2,500 clicks, we knew we had created something big. So far, more than 200 people have completed the hunt!

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So, what did we learn in the process?

At the end of the day, yes, this project was highly technical, but we would say we learned just as much about what it means to “build in public” as anything we learned about the tech.

Interestingly, building in public happened as a byproduct of being excited about the progress (and quite honestly, it happened most often after becoming stuck on technical hurdles). Progress was slow, but each accomplishment was such a gift that we wanted to share snapshots from the journey with the Webflow community and beyond.

The part that was most interesting, however, is that by showing the unfinished work while it was still in progress, we received encouragement when we needed it most. I think as creatives, we’re anxious about revealing the messy guts of a thing because we think people will judge us. The reality is, nothing is or should be “first draft perfect” and perpetuating the illusion that anything really works that way is damaging, and a little bit of a lie. Just our two cents.

It might be hard to believe, but we almost threw in the proverbial pool towel on this project multiple times. We almost didn’t submit to talk at WebflowConf. We almost didn’t submit for an award. We almost didn’t finish in time.

But it was the encouragement of friends, especially on Twitter, that made us feel accountable — not only for what we were building, but also for our vision of bringing a bit more joy into the world. Their feedback helped us refine some of our ideas, but also just helped to keep us going.

So, to the Webflow community and everyone who supported us along the run, “thank you.” The whole idea behind this project was to spark joy and to create a moment of calm and peace. 

We hope you enjoy playing Letter Run as much as we enjoyed creating it.

Thank you for taking the time to get to know Edgar Allan. Learn more about us and the work we do; we hope to hear from you soon.