Balancing ethics, creativity, and business goals in design: Readymag’s take

In October 2024, Readymag hosted its first online conference, Design Layers, bringing together industry leaders to explore the balance between ethics, creativity, and business goals in design. Since its inception, Readymag has been searching for the golden ratio between these priorities and is still looking for it—that’s why we’ve made a go at reflecting on this equilibrium in a world that demands constant creativity yet mindfulness in work. In this piece, Diana Kasay, Co-founder and CEO of Readymag, and Alya Datii, Head of Marketing at Readymag, share how the company manages to preach creativity, stay responsible, and foster design education—all while growing as a business.

Going off the fundraising race to stay true to values

Diana Kasay: 12 years ago, two Readymag co-founders and I were driven by a desire to create something meaningful for the design community alongside our friends. We were so geeky back then: we wanted to craft an independent publishing tool for fanzines so everyone could have their own zine and tell stories about their journeys, lives, and careers digitally.

Our first “offices” were just friends’ apartments and even an attic in an old museum—a super strange and ugly one. I was working two jobs because we could only afford to pay the employees’ salaries. Terms like “startup,” “fundraising,” and “burn rates” were all new to us, and we had little understanding of the realities of business. I imagined Readymag would become as big as Apple within two years. The plan was to launch the product and have it instantly become every designer’s crush—having designers worldwide use it to create their web scenes. Now that I’ve grown, I no longer want Readymag to be a big company. I want to know each person on the team by name, bring real value to our users, and stay true to myself.

Readymag is an independent business, and like any self-sustaining company, it needs to stay profitable. I feel a huge responsibility for all of the team members, and do my best to make sure the economy part works well. I spent half of 2024 researching venture capital and fundraising, spoke with over 70 funds, investors, and market experts, and sometimes scheduled around 10 meetings daily. While doing so, I closely observed their questions, keeping track of what people were interested in regarding Readymag. When I reached the deep dive and offer stages, I made a hard stop and decided that Readymag should remain a bootstrapped company.

It’s important to me that the team’s focus stays on our users, our product, and our values, rather than on increasing capitalization or catering to the interests of new shareholders. 

Preaching a human-first approach in management and strategy

Diana Kasay: For me, Readymag’s core value is its human-first approach—both within a team and in business. We’re creating Readymag for people who, in turn, use the tool to create projects for other people, and it’s crucial for us to listen to them and accommodate their needs.

When Readymag was just released, most people started creating not only webzines, but all kinds of projects, like editorials, portfolios, and landing pages. The company decided to follow them, and Readymag pivoted to its current niche—becoming a universal no-code tool for web design.

We never cease to be in touch with our users. Right now, Readymag’s customer support satisfaction score averages 96.5%, and support team agents respond to requests within 30 minutes and mostly manage to help within one day.

Readymag’s human resource policies reflect our human-centric approach within the team. We’re a crew of around 40 people, many of whom have been working together for more than five years. 

We know each other not only by name and function, retain knowledge that no Google document could ever hold, and develop ideas that arise in conversations.

We offer educational, sports, and mental health perks, fully paid maternal and paternal leave, 28 guaranteed vacation days, and on-demand paid sick leave. We also strive to observe work-life balance in daily operational routines: there’s no overtime in the company, and Readymag’s working day is 6 hours plus one hour for lunch, totaling 35 business hours a week.

Using brand communication to push design forward

Alya Datii: Readymag adheres to the central values of creative freedom, simplicity, responsibility, and self-sustainability. Most of our marketing activities—special projects, blog articles, and the recent Design Layers conference—are about promoting the culture of design, providing a supportive space for creativity, and giving people as much access as possible to Readymag’s expertise.

That’s why we made Design Layers a free event, invited acclaimed speakers like Samar Maakaroun, a Pentagram partner, and Verònica Fuerte of Hey Studio, and asked them to prepare unique presentations.

Apart from our own events—lectures, meetups, and workshops—we participate in design events worldwide. We’re careful about where we speak and which conferences we attend, as it’s essential for us that the partners and venues share our values.

This year we presented at the By Design Conference in Bratislava. We chose this conference even though the geography is unfamiliar to us because it was created by people who’ve been involved in design for many years and are promoting the design culture in Slovakia outside the conference. The topic of this year’s By Design Conference was “How to end things,” and Diana Kasay and I voiced our project, Designing Women, which also seeks to end the gender imbalance in design.

We run a blog with career advice, design hacks, website selections, and interviews with industry professionals, and publish editorials on the ethical and aesthetic sides of design on our website. One of our key web specials, Designing Women, was created in 2019 and supported our feminist agenda. In 2024, we expanded Designing Women with more profiles of women in design, an open page of resources, and the ReadyLaunch grant for media projects. After receiving the grant, four creative women are crafting four online and offline projects to support other women, non-binary people, and oppressed cultural groups through design.

Our content is not only a promotional activity—it’s also a vital vibe check with our audience and the audience we want to attract. Anyone can use Readymag, but we know the backbone of our community is made up of people who share our values.

When we promote ourselves not just in a “make a beautiful website” sense, but through valuable content, we’re able to capture our audience’s attention and attract people with similar viewpoints at the same time. 

Readymag’s editor is based on the What You See Is What You Get principle, and it’s relevant to the tool itself, but also true to our communication. Suppose people ask us whether they should set up their online stores with Readymag. In that case, we’ll be honest: if you’re a designer and want to sell a few posters and t-shirts, Readymag is a great option for you, but if you’re a big marketplace and want to deal with large orders, you should probably consider an e-commerce-first solution.

We don’t mislead users for quick gains, but work for long-term relationships.