Irbenes

We want to be fair. We do not want to be a money machine for our founder and highest managers; rather, we want to value and respect every human that is a part of our business. It is true that the ultimate goal of every company is to make money, but the real question is how the money is spent and what the money is made for. Here we discuss how we see our company in the future, what would we like to achieve, to change in the professional world and how.

Firstly, let's talk about what we would like to achieve in the future. For now, we are a company, which biggest field of interest is, as you know, graphic design, especially brand design. We design visual identities for brands and companies, advertisements, social media posts and beyond. This is the main idea now. However, in the future, we would love to expand our scope to similar, close fields, such as: web-development, marketing and advertising services. It is important to note that we highlight the word similar and close. We do not want to create a big, corporate empire that stretches across multiple professional fields and maximises its profits; actually, the opposite is true: we want to remain in our niche, we want to perfect it, and prove that it is possible to run solid, reliable, and sustainable company which delivers, whilst respecting people — both workers and customers.

Another question about the future is how we would like to achieve what we said above, is the vision achievable and real — short answer: yes, and there already exist like-minded companies. The question has been partially answered already, but let's dive deeper into it. Again, as one of our slogan goes: we are here to serve you, not the other way around. Nowadays, in the age of enshittification, late stage capitalism, and k-shaped economy the companies and their leaders are getting richer and richer, the workers and customers increasingly poorer, the quality, usefulness, and friendliness of the companies' services diminish rapidly. It does no longer feel that their solutions serve you; rather, with the subscription models, you are the one serving. This is what is unacceptable for us. We do and will always treat people with due respect. Our commitment is clear — as discussed in other Origins of Our Phiosophy posts: being close to our customer, human interactions, quality are paramount for us. They are the core of our company. There would not be us, without you, after all!

The company to which we had looked and still look for inspiration is Ecosia. They have paved the way and shown everyone that a business with a mission other than endless source of money is possible. Their profits, instead of feeding the top officials, like, e.g., the Big Tech does, go straight into fighting the climate change, planting trees. In fact, Ecosia is a part of our European strategy — their search engine is the one of our choice.

Altogether, there are certain things we will do and will never do. What you can expect from us and to what we commit: reliability, friendliness, fairness, closeness to the customer, quality, human interactions among others. What we commit not to do: AI overtaking peoples' talent and work, using the enslaving subscription model, benefiting the high company's officials without limits and beyond imagination — our success will benefit all of the workers, because each of them has a share in it.

These days, people are losing their jobs due to greed. We believe, we know that like-minded companies which value people and fairness above others are the future. Let's build a better tomorrow with European principles of fairness and peace, shall we?

If you would like to support our mission of creating reliable and human-centered business, consider sharing this article or, if in need, consider using our services!

Whilst everything undergoes the process of “enshittification” nowadays, we want to fight back. Everything is subscription-based, everything is automatic, everything is set to maximise profits, everything is created to make you addicted; nothing is for people, nothing is for you. And we will resist! At Irbenes, we see the problem ourselves and we want to make something about it. We are not a large corporation, therefore our actions will not have immediate effects, though, we believe, the change comes from below, from the small companies and ordinary people, who together create the social fabric we live in.

We strive to be fair. That is, we want to be reliable and close to our customers. But how do we define these quantities? For us, being reliable, is all about sustainability of our products and services, delivering them in high quality such that they last and are both versatile and maintainable. Next, being close to our customers is another pillar of our philosophy. Being close means that we are always there to discuss with; in reality and simple terms, it means that in all stages of our work for you, you get feedback from us, you can criticise the progress and make suggestions for new features or for improving the existent ones. We are here to serve you, not the other way round. Also, nothing is automatic! When you are speaking with us, you are speaking to a human, not an AI model. We find it paramount not to facilitate LLMs, as they lack human understanding, intuition, and hallucinate.

Reliability, however, can be understood even more broadly – not only in terms of the services and products, but also in terms of how the whole work process, your data etc. are managed. It is at the core of our identity that we use only European and open-source solutions in all aspects of the company – from design tools to Internet hosting. Furthermore, with us, your stored data is secure and minimal as it is securely stored with open-source solutions and only comprises of information needed for billing and accounting. No data processing, no targeting, no selling or whatsoever.

If our values correspond with yours, if you would like to support us, share information about us with others or, if you need some designs, trust us and let's build your brand and better tomorrow together!

One might wonder what are the origins, the reasons behind the philosophy of our company. One might wonder why we only use products of European or open-source origin. The answer is simple, yet, at the same time, not. Short answer: because we want to amplify the growth and well-being of our own market, our people, not someone else's first.

For a long time, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union and the introduction of mono-polar world as we had known it, the European Union had been called a partner of the USA, yet it was much more of a club of U.S. dependent countries. In the EU, we had imported goods of all sorts from the USA: from common consumption goods to services, from military security to digital platforms. We must acknowledge that we were fully dependent, which was an ideal world for America. Europeans were buying American stocks, their treasuries etc... money was flowing in one direction. But nowadays the true face of the USA is fully revealed under Trump's administration – we are not friends, we are not partners; we are two distinct and different world powers with different objectives and interests.

Throughout the years we got increasingly more vassalised militarily, economically and digitally. The aspect we would like to bring up is the digital one. The vast majority of Europeans use American products every day; this, unfortunately, includes the public, governmental sector. America does not have as high quality privacy related laws as we do. Our data, of which we are unaware, is flowing everyday in and out of the Silicon Valley in tremendous amounts. We let them store and sell our personal information, we let them train their AI models on our intellectual properties without consent. Our everyday devices such as our phones, our personal computers etc. are becoming increasingly more hostile towards us. They come with so called “bloatware” and “spyware” already preinstelled. They access our personal information and system's specifications without a notice. This is unacceptable.

Fortunately, in the last couple of years this has been hugely addressed by Europeans. We have seen a success of #buyFromEU movement and its alike, we have seen Europeans selling their stocks of U.S. based companies, we have seen a rapid growth of Linux's market share – even the public sector has started to do something about it. The EU is integrating further, the 28th regime – the so called EU Inc., the digital Euro and much more is being implemented at the moment. And now, it is our turn. We, at Irbenes, are based in the EU – in Finland – and, thus, we have to support our common interests as well as the Union. We will defend the right to privacy. We will defend the right to transparency. We will defend European digital sovereignty. Thus, at Irbenes, we use only European and open-source solutions as they are the only way to insure privacy and security for us and for our customers as well as our common economic prosperity in the Union.

The Europeans have always lacked the idea of how nice, how amazing it is to be European. In the social and traditional media they had always been feeding us the propaganda of the U.S. being the land of the free. Though, how free are they? Here, we, Europeans, can freely go to our forests to pick some berries or mushrooms; they are surprised that we can or they are shot for trespassing. Here, we get universal and free healthcare and great education; there, they go bankrupt in order to finish a degree or to fix a broken leg. Here, we can express our opinions freely, openly protesting and sharing our opinions; there, ICE will spray tear-gas into your eyes if you silently stay with a banner against the government. European freedom is not about the right to carry guns. It is about being free to live. It is about being free to be yourself. It is about being free to be a human instead of American-like money machine for corporations. Think about that, fellow European!

If you want to support our mission or simply want a neat and modern visual image, contact us. We will not disappoint you!