To clarify: I did come from Crate. All designers here are way better than me in many ways. You could say we all have design chops. I'm not a creative director. I'm a designer. I prefer to be called an employee (only). Ryan and Jason still design. They are intimately involved in all design. Scott Upton, Jason Zimdars, and Jonas Downey are also part of the design team. They are all very awesome.
Trello and Asana are free (last time I checked). It'll be hard to make money from people using their apps for free. No money = no app improvement. IMHO.
"Also to note, I often find that radical new variant designs for well established clients have rapidly diminishing returns."
I totally agree. However, this is a marketing site that "established clients" probably won't be visiting often. Once they've signed up the site has done its job right?
Yeah, a series of deliberate decisions led us down this path. We could have opened it up and made it more generic. The tight scope allowed us to get it deployed in 3 days.