about BlagoWorks

About Blagoworks

Blagoworks is a small company in the Netherlands, focused on delivering rich interactive online products for a diverse set of clients.

We operate from the idea that great code is visible, directly helping in the success of the product, and great design is bound to make the product work better, more functional. In a great product you’ll see both great code and great design, and we intend to give our clients just that. But most of all, we think that a great product should be great fun too – fun to use, fun to make. Which matters to us, as we’re *makers* of things as well as users.

The name, *blago*, is a 20+ year old nonsense word derived from the Dutch “blaagje”, or brat. It was used as a nom-de-plume for hand made posters. Back in the eighties, the name needed abbreviation to be cool, so in the turbo language of the day, blaagje became “blago”. Turns out that blago does mean something: it means “treasure” in Slavic languages, or “good moral values” in Russian. This, of course, is strictly an accidental meaning, not something we sought as a brand for ourselves… (but we can live with accidents like that).

The blago.telexer is a pet project of Hanneke, Blagoworks founder, interaction designer and news addict.
She feels that access to good, reliable news is essential to a well-functioning democracy. Telexer’s forerunner, Blago Rss Reader, was a Flash-and-Screenweaver Windows-only application, published just in time for the start of the Iraq war in 2003. At the time, it was very interesting to see the news come in over the course of the day. In the Reader, news items would show up ungraded by size and prominence, just by order of chronology, for the user to decide what would be the main story of the day. The current application is a complete overhaul of the first version, but the basic experience of sitting on top of the news telex is still there.

Blagoworks is situated in Utrecht in the center of the Netherlands. Please see the main site for more details and the online portfolio.