The unofficial history of Cast from Clay.
Tom Hashemi set up a digital agency, VERSION2, alongside his existing freelance clients in late 2014. It primarily offered website design and development services. The company took on several policy and political clients, including the Labour Campaign for Human Rights and the Center for the National Interest.
After several false starts finding a reliable creative, Oscar Park, a school friend of Tom’s, stepped into the mix. They used a firm ‘PSD2HTML.com’ to build the websites – it was an intermediary company that married up build requests with web development companies in Ukraine.
Rebranding to We are Flint
The name VERSION2 was always intended as a placeholder – something to trade under until the business evolved into its second version. In 2016, Tom and Oscar landed on the name We are Flint, and Oscar designed the visual identity.
While the agency had had political/policy clients since day 1, the brand was now entirely focused on them. The brand was established “in the wake of, and in response to, Brexit. We are troubled by the failure of experts on both sides to engage with the public, and the seeming invisibility of meaningful, well-informed perspectives from across the political spectrum.”
It had one goal: “to make strong, evidence-based ideas spread like wildfire”. This remains our core focus today. Importantly, this brand clearly articulated something we’d wanted to do for a while: marry profit with purpose.
Growth and incorporation.
The agency grew, and 25-28 Limited was incorporated on the 20th September 2016. 25 because Tom was born on the 25th of the month, and 28 because Oscar was born on the 28th. We didn’t use ‘We are Flint’ because we figured it would change at some point in the future. The company continued to trade under the brand name We are Flint, and its first offices were in a co-working space in the Bussey Building, Peckham Rye.
Oscar decided the world of policy was not for him and stepped away from the business. You may still meet him though – he helps us out every now and again. Around the same time, Aidan Muller started increasingly working with the company, we moved to new offices in St Matthew’s Church, Brixton in February 2018, and Aidan became a partner. By this time, we had also started building a team in Lviv, Ukraine, initially through an intermediary company, and then directly.
Introducing Cast from Clay
We picked up a number of good clients, including several that are still with us today – Surgery&Redcow, Portland Communications, the Texas National Security Review, Inkstick Media, and the Stimson Center – which fuelled our growth. We found that the projects that were the most purposeful and had the largest positive impact on the world were also our most profitable.
In late 2019, we were forced to change our name. We ran a rebrand process in a couple of weeks (don’t do this) launching the new brand on 2nd December 2019. The visual identity was designed by Chris Poole, then Creative Director of Surgery&Redcow, and a longstanding client.
The modern era.
We moved into our current offices in Edinburgh House, Kennington, in April 2021. The following year was a challenging year for us as a company, in part driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Aidan departed the business to focus on pastures new, and 2023 saw us return to growth with several campaign wins, under a new management team with the promotion of Natallia Nenarokamava and the recruitment of Nicholas Taylor.
We’re busy making tomorrow’s history as we speak.
