Ridgeway & Cole
Websites and digital products for research, culture and science. A studio of eleven in Cambridge.
The studio in numbers
Founded in 2015 by Anna Ridgeway and Tobi Cole. Small enough that one of us designs every project we take on.
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Designers and engineers
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Sites and products launched
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Median LCP at launch
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Average client relationship
Fast is the floor, not the point
The web got quicker and more forgettable at the same time. We think the organisations with the hardest ideas deserve better than a template with their logo on it.
Most of our clients explain something difficult for a living: a protein, a biennale, a body of research. Their websites are where a funder, a student or a visitor decides whether to keep reading.
So we start from the idea and its audience, and treat speed and accessibility as the minimum. Every launch ships with a performance budget and a WCAG 2.2 AA audit. Neither is an upsell.
Calyx Genomics, research and careers
A WebGL protein explorer that loads in 1.2 seconds on a phone, built so a candidate can see the science before reading the job. Applications to research roles rose 64 percent in six months.
Fenland Biennale, identity and tickets
A digital identity and ticketing flow for a new arts biennale across eleven rural venues. Day passes, venue maps and a route planner sold 41,000 tickets online.
Orrery Press, open-access reading
A reading platform for an open-access publisher: 1,900 papers, footnotes in the margin, citations copied in one tap. It reads well on a train, which is where most of it gets read.
Selected index
Six of the forty-six, chosen because each had a hard idea at its centre and a number we could move.
Calyx Genomics
Website WebGL Next.js
Research and careers site with a WebGL protein explorer. Research applications up 64 percent.
Fenland Biennale
Identity Ticketing
Digital identity and ticketing across eleven venues. 41,000 tickets sold online.
Orrery Press
Product Reading
Open-access reading platform for 1,900 papers. Median page load 0.9 seconds.
Saltmarsh Robotics
Website 3D
Product site with real-time 3D of a field robot. Demo requests doubled in the first quarter after launch.
Institute for Circular Materials
Content Migration
A 600-page research site cut to 140, with every redirect mapped by hand. No ranking loss at cutover.
Tidepool Health
Design system Accessibility
Design system and patient app, audited to WCAG 2.2 AA before an NHS framework bid.
From the studio
Components, prototypes and the odd render from the last few launches.
What the work did
Measured by our clients in CrUX field data and their own analytics, ninety days after each launch.
Mobile LCP after relaunch
Seconds, 75th percentile field data
Calyx research applications
Per month, launch in month three
How a project runs
Most projects take ten to sixteen weeks. The shape stays the same; the length depends on how much content needs rewriting.
Read everything first
Two weeks inside your research, analytics and support inbox before we draw anything. We usually find the real brief here.
Structure in the open
Sitemap, content model and redirect map in a shared board your team edits with us, not a PDF sent for approval.
Prototype with real content
Figma prototypes built from your actual papers, events and data, tested with five people from each audience.
Build to a budget
Next.js on a headless CMS, with a performance budget enforced in CI. A page that breaks it does not ship.
Stay for ninety days
A named engineer on call after launch, and a ninety-day report against the numbers we agreed at the start.
Starting a project with us
We take on six new projects a year so that Anna or Tobi can design each one. Projects usually start eight to ten weeks after a first conversation, and our next openings are in spring 2027.
If you have a brief, send it. If you only have a problem, send that instead; it is often the better starting point.
New projects
Anna Ridgeway
anna@ridgewaycole.studio
Studio
14 Mill Road, Cambridge CB1 2AD
What clients say after the launch party