By Winnie Wong
razorfish.com is a sleek
and beautiful website, with an economy of moving graphics and gentle
colored text. Unfortunately, I have no idea what this razorfish company
does. So I started with the "Careers with Razorfish" heading,
figuring that a listing of job posting might be an indication of what
these people do. Here I am told that Razorfish doesn't believe in
job titles, rather, "work is defined by roles...instead of fixed
responsibilities, Razorfish's aproach is to match the roles people
play to the deliverables required." This is followed by a list
of "role titles" you can click on. This all strikes me as
rather silly - they've simply replaced the word "job title"
with "role title" by a slick sounding redefinition that
basically changes nothing. Then I realize that Razorfish is a consulting
company.
It appears that as a consulting company, Razorfish basically repackages
or rewords or reimages things (anything) for other companies. Razorfish
seems to specialize in digital technologies (broadband, mobile and
web), but it basically "provides solutions." But more importantly,
it appears as though Razorfish believes that it can help businesses
by integrating many aspects of commerce together - applying traditional
strategies such as consumer research, product development and brand
implementation, to digital solutions in broadband, mobile and web.
This means implementing mobile portals, creating information architecture,
providing broadband interactivity, and so on. It all sounds rather
grandiose and godlike. But it sounds like they do it rather well.
I'm sold.