These guys are rock stars! Such talent and creativity - striking, professional, innovative ideas. They are always so excited about our business, our products, and our team... Absolutely love working with Al and his team!
Highly recommended! Fantastic team to work with, yielding fabulous results.
There is no one company that I enjoy more to work with!!! S51 is fantastic!
Excellent creative firm with great leadership and associates!
Surface 51 was amazing in handling my teams designs! Not only that, but they provided great interpersonal relations!
Surface 51 is an excellent partner! They do a great job designing and maintaining our website, with very good turnaround times for our requests. They are a great source for print design projects and have created a number of pieces for us over the years. The S51 team is easy to work with and always offers up fresh ideas to help us communicate more effectively.
Surface 51 is the absolute best marketing partner we could ever have! Their ability to create impactful design has helped move LeaderShape from a small not-for-profit into a global organization connecting with clients all over the world. The staff is the best we have ever worked with here in Champaign. We wouldn't trust our message to anyone else!
AMAZING group of extremely talented individuals!! This team always goes above & beyond ALL expectations- they never disappoint!! Not to mention, they take a lot of time to truly get to know your business and your needs so they may serve you the best way possible! They are the BEST at what they do, hands down!
I had the privilege to work with the incredible team at Surface 51 multiple times over the past 15 years. From freelance website to academic department website to product launch, branding, and print materials, they impressed me with their fabulous design skills. Their team continues to blow me away with their knowledge and experience at seemingly every level of graphic design, marketing, web development, product marketing, print design, video, and animations. They tell the story, they are professional and creative, and just plain great collaborators. I will be back!
Simple, elegant, extraordinary, timeless, always relevant. The team helps you figure out the brand you want to be and then it is magic from there.
The S51 team is consistently great to work with. They take time to listen to our needs, provide creative ideas and their work is top notch. Plus, the whole team is just fun!
I had the pleasure of working with the S51 team during our company s recent rebranding efforts. We re a small organization, but S51 s team took the time to get to know us and walked us through every step of the process with skill, patience, and unfailing good humor. We evaluated several other firms but chose S51 because we felt that from the first meeting they sincerely listened and understood what we were struggling to convey. The result is a marketing presence that reflects our uniqueness and what our company has to offer. What S51 offers is a talented, hard-working, creative team that will work with your organization to help reimagine what your business can be. Their work products are bold, beautiful, and brilliant. Kudos and many thanks to my friends at S51!
Surface 51 is amazing! They listened to me, my ideas and the issues I care about and made an incredible marketing plan that has propelled my campaign further than I ever imagined. They listen and act and take in any suggestions and turn the work into most amazing products I have seen.
Great design that make the difference when trying to get your name out in the public! Fantastic office full of creative energy.
S51 built a beautiful website with high functionality. However, they also promised they were "in the business of building websites, not maintaining them" and that "your website will be 100% your own". Neither of these things proved to be true. The CMS that S51 uses, Drupal, is only appropriate for high level intermediate to advanced web developers. I made it very clear I was a beginner when I began contract negotiations with S51. At no point did the difficult learning curve of Drupal come up. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH ON CMS PLATFORMS (DRUPAL, WORDPRESS, JOOMLA). Do not just accept S51 sales pitch. If Drupal is not for you, then choose a different company.
They also assured me I would be able to manage my own site. If you hope to perform your own updates, plan on having a web developer on staff or purchasing S51's maintenance package. They knew my budget, that I was a start-up, and that I was only planning on creating a website if I could maintain it myself. Despite that knowledge, at no point was it mentioned how difficult Drupal would be to use and the price of the S51 maintenance package was never discussed until I had already given S51 $14,000 to complete the website build. Only after all my checks had cleared, my month "training and bug fix" period was up, and my website had encountered a fatal error did S51 quote me the $6000 a year to maintain and update my website. At this point they also backtracked by saying that they meant that managing your own website was editing your own text and photos, not completing your own security updates. I never would have committed to building a website, especially a Drupal one, if it had been made clear in the beginning that I would spend months of my life trying to keep it cobbled together. I would gladly give the entire thing back including the year of data in the database that I generated for my money back. Having S51 build this website is one of my greatest regrets.
If you have a large annual budget for website development and maintenance, then S51 is the right choice. Even in my frustration, I can admit that their design is sleek and impeccable. I have a lot of respect for Andy and Michelle, the Drupal and web developers, after having fought a terrible 2 years trying to learn what they know. But I can't recommend S51 because the sales and contract process lacks transparency, the training they provided that was included in my contract was a joke, and the month support package is a placebo. Most the issues you encounter, particularly with the Drupal or module updates, won't occur until after the month of bug support has elapsed. I can't emphasize enough doing your own research about CMS platforms, security and platform updates after your initial contract expires, and the actual extent of the training packages offered by the website development company you are looking to employ.
Loman-Ray Insurance Group recently utilized Al Fleener and the entire Surface 51 team for quite a large project involving Branding, Marketing, Commercials etc and this group is nothing short of AMAZING!! Professional, but feel like family...extremely efficient...passionate, knowledgeable and all around just wonderful! Do not hesitate to reach out to Surface 51 for anything - I don't know that there's anything out of reach for this amazingly talented group!
S51 is the best! They are great about listening to what you want and making that a reality while also improving your ideas along the way. Highly Recommend them!
surface51.com
