What We've Been Up To: September 2026

There’s plenty more on that to come on our socials over the coming days, but for now, read on to find out what the team has been up to in September, and I’ll be back with a more substantial update in October.

New Servers and Better File Storage

It’s now a very exciting time for Twilo as we are upgrading the way we are working. It is now time for us to say goodbye to the old development server and welcome a new modern server on Plesk. This upgrade is going to lead to better security, more reliability and faster development sites. This has also opened an opportunity for more efficient workflows and improve the way we progress from development to staging and to live. I am greatly looking forward to what developing new websites in the future looks like with this new setup.

Jumping on the Warcraft Hype Train

Back at home in the gaming world, Blizzard have released a new Warcraft 3 expansion that ties into a new exciting announcement for World Of Warcraft. I’ve now of course pre-ordered World Of Warcraft Forever and got the Warcraft 3 expansion. I’ve been playing through the expansion’s campaign and been really enjoying it despite having the wrong kind of keyboard for it. I’m still really bad at the RTS genre though so I’m probably going to stay away from the multiplayer.

A Weekend in York

I have managed to get some time away this month which I have spent in York. We did a couple of Museums which were really cool. We did the Jorvik Viking Centre which has you going around on a ride through a model Viking village with talking and moving animatronics. This was awesome and was something I have been wanting to do for a really long time.

After Jorvik, we tried some local independent cafés and had some really nice food before exploring more attractions. The view from Clifford Tower was fantastic and the Castle Museum has lots of cool stuff in it. My favourite is the model street and the old dungeons that we went exploring in. I definitely need to go to York more often.

What I’ve Been Building

This month has gone into a set of updates for a garden room company. The main aim was to improve the number of enquiries coming through the site, so a lot of the thinking went into how to make that as easy as possible for the people landing on it.

A big part of that was taking down the barriers to getting in touch. We added multiple contact forms across the site so there’s always an easy way to enquire, wherever someone happens to be, along with brochure requests so they can get more detail sent over without much effort. The less someone has to hunt around to reach you, the more likely they are to actually do it!

We also improved the journey quote tool, where you click through the different options for creating a garden room and get guided towards the right setup for you. Making that flow smoother and clearer means people can picture their own room and get to the point of enquiring with a lot less friction along the way.

On top of that, we finished the configurator for one of our clients, a car company. We added a whole new navigation and a comparison tool so people can put the different models side by side and weigh them up. The client’s really happy with how it all turned out, and it’s working well for them; they’ve been getting a lot more conversions off the back of it.

Away From the Screen

The start of the month was all about moving into the new house. It took a fair bit of effort, plenty of trips back and forth in the car from the old place to the new one, hauling everything across bit by bit. It always ends up being more than you think, but we got there in the end.

Now that the bulk of it is done, the place is finally settling and starting to come together. There’s still the odd box to unpack and bits to sort, but it’s already starting to feel like home, which makes all the effort worth it.

The ice hockey is back too, which is always good news. Been to see the Leeds Knights and it’s great being back watching them, the pace of it and the atmosphere in the rink is hard to beat. Good to have it back as part of the week again.

Managed to get out on the golf course a few times too, which was a good break from all the moving. Still donating plenty of balls to the lake, but I’m enjoying it.

What’s Next

Next up is the start of a brand new website build, which should be a fun project to get into. Always good to be starting something fresh from the ground up, so looking forward to getting stuck in. On to October.

This month I started work on an exciting new web project, designed a whole host of print collateral for a large conference, and travelled to Montenegro for 9 days for my wedding anniversary.

New Project

We’ve kicked off work on a new web project, a rewards platform that allows our client to give their customers spend targets and reward them with vouchers when targets are hit. It’s quite a specific, bespoke build, which is a common theme at Twilo, so it requires a good amount of planning and preparation to ensure we have everything mapped out before I even open Figma.

Myself and Wayne spent a good amount of time plotting out the user journey with pieces of paper, we both find this technique of getting things down on a table in front of us much more tactile and easier to follow than staring at pixels on a screen. It really helps us see where the user will go and what needs to come next and encourages quick collaboration and exploration of ideas.

Once we had all this mapped out and were happy we’d covered all the bases, I was finally able to crack open Figma and get designing – the response from client on the first visuals has been really positive and I’m excited to move into October designing the rest of the views.

Print is Not Dead!

Another big project I’ve been working on this month has been producing various print assets for a large conference being held in Manchester at the end of the month. Being a web-first agency at heart, print jobs aren’t quite as common, so when they come around it’s always really fun to put my graphic designer hat on and create things that will be printed and put up in the world.

The project required a whole host of different assets, from roller banners, to name badges and lanyards, to branded giveaways like notepads and pens, and even branded sweets and mints. Its been great working with the client on this one to organise the best print for the space they’ll be hosting in, and thinking of all the different items we could use as giveaways on the day.

Outside of Work

Outside of work has been super busy too. The start of the month was my second wedding anniversary which we spent in Montenegro; a really beautiful place with incredible seafood and unbelievable oceans and mountains. We did several boat trips and managed to take a tour of Lake Skadar where we saw all kinds of birds including a kingfisher, which as two avid Merlin app users we were absolutely over the moon with.

Next month I’m excited to continue with the rewards platform and get that into dev stage, and hopefully we’ll be starting another new web project that is set to be an exciting one!

September has been a really productive month for me and one that has felt quite different to previous months in a really good way.

Liam and I have been spending a lot of time together doing proper insight assessments across all of our clients. We’ve been really digging into the audiences for each one, looking closely at how people are interacting with content, what’s working, what isn’t, and using all of that to build new strategies to drive more engagement going forward. The meetings we’ve been having on it have been really insightful and it feels like the kind of work that is going to make a real difference to how we approach content across the board. Really excited about where it’s all heading.

I’ve also been working with the rest of the team on something that I can’t talk about just yet, but it’s worth the wait. More news very soon!

On top of all of that, I’ve been making some really exciting plans for Twilo’s own content too. I’ve had some ideas brewing for a while now and September has been the month when they’re almost ready to come to fruition. All will become clear in due course!

Back to the Routine

September brought the return of the school run and we are almost back into the swing of things now. It’s amazing how quickly you forget the morning routine over the summer!

We had a brilliant weekend away with a group of friends at Sundown Adventureland. The kids absolutely loved every second of it and it was so lovely to get away together as a group of adults too, not just for the little ones!

I also managed to get to the cinema to see The Cycle of Love, a film that one of my oldest friends was an assistant producer on. I honestly cannot recommend it highly enough. It was unbelievably lovely and I am so proud of her and of everyone involved in making it. If you get the chance to see it, please do!

Also, my mum and dad got a new kitten!

The Big Move

September at work has been all about preparing to move out of our office at Crossgates House and transitioning to a remote way of working. Lots of things to arrange and organise, including a new meeting space for us at Yorkshire House in Leeds city centre where we will convene twice a month. Lovely premises with a cafe, roof terrace and our own office.

Meanwhile two new web projects have been kicked off and are into the design stages, keeping our Senior Designer, Liam very busy along with some print projects.

Home and Away

This month heralds ‘back to school’ and suddenly the calendar fills up with school events, meetings and open evenings. At the weekends, I have been able to enjoy some more art gallery visits. At Tate Britain I enjoyed the Whistler exhibition then on (by boat!) to the Tate Modern for the Frida Kahlo exhibition. Whatever you think of her art, Kahlo had a very interesting life and the exhibition focused on this and particularly on her making as a modern icon.

Finally, I visited one of my favourite galleries, the Lady Lever in Port Sunlight to view the May Morris exhibition. Only a small exhibit of a few rooms but worth the journey to have another look around the rest of the gallery which showcases Victorian art, including more than a few beautiful Pre-Raphaelite and Late Victorian pieces.