Web Design

Liezl Croft is an utterly lovely wedding and family portrait photographer. A force of South African fabulousness, creative, warm, friendly and with an eye for fun she asked us to create a brand refresh and blogsite that would reflect where her business is today as well as (of course) attracting and retaining lots of new clients.

And whilst we’ve been working with her on her printed literature now for several years, I was delighted when she asked us to give her blog a brandover. Having set up her business less than two years ago, Liezl had previously created her websites herself and felt that her business was at a level where she was ready to step things up a gear.

As well as being a cracking lifestyle photographer, Liezl is also very crafty and I think you’ll see that come through in the look and feel of the site.

We’ve worked on creating direct mail for Liezl in the past (which we won a design award last year for) but this project gave us the chance to really flex our creative muscles! We designed to create Liezl a WordPress based blogsite – a website and blog rolled into one which would give her the chance to showcase her photography without being too onerous to manage.

We put together a colour palette that created an aspirational feel, whilst plenty of texture and elements like the bunting creates a sensory quality and follows on from the work we did previously on the mailers. We all love the icons that Chloe created for each category, and the beautiful pattern that sets off the blog. I’d always known that Liezl’s work was beautiful, but what I hadn’t appreciated was the enormous difference the right surroundings make to her images.

If you take a look at the difference between the old blog and the new, I think you’ll agree they’re night and day apart.

Liezl’s old blog

I don’t want to embarrass anyone by going into this too heavily, let’s just say that the design of the blog had a long way to catch up with the quality of Liezl’s work…

And the new blogsite

Liezl has been so much fun to work with on this project and we wish her lots of luck with the new site and branding. It’s too early to measure the financial success of the blog – it’s been live for less than a month, but visits have doubled and the feedback to Liezl’s Facebook and Twitter page was overwhelming! Do hope on over and take a look (and do leave her a comment too, it’s so lovely to receive feedback when you’re writing your heart out and you know how lonely it can be when you’re first blogging)… You’ll find Liezl’s website and blog at www.liezlcroft.com

Tagged as in Blogging, Case Studies, From The Studio, Web Design, Websites

I know it’s oh-so-tempting to go into lockdown mode come early December. Those marketing projects you have at the back of your mind can wait until after Christmas whilst you deal with the general madness of the festive season.

And I do understand that thinking, but it doesn’t make good business sense. Why? Because that same slow decline into Christmas is often mirrored on the other side, and it’s often February before life lets you start planning ahead. As you know, we’re working hard to dangle some carrots to get you thinking about your websites and logos this side of Christmas (and whilst we will be dangling some carrots in January, our biggest carrots will go to the lovely people who have already started thinking ahead!) and so I thought that we might celebrate some of those Forward Thinkers on the blog.

Introducing… Griffin Glasshouses

Linda Lane is Managing Director of Griffin Glasshouses and one of our first Forward Thinkers. Linda is planning ahead for a busy Spring season and has asked us to create a new website. We spent a couple of hours mapping out the website with Linda and her team – planning the customer journey, understanding how we could make the most of Griffin’s sales funnel and understanding how the site should be structured.

For the last couple of weeks Linda has been able to focus on her day job whilst we’ve been hard at work behind the scenes: developing concepts. creating wireframes and this week, creating a knockout design that I hope knocks the socks off the current design.

The Current Website

Naturally there’ll need to be a little input (when Linda and her team are ready) to review the designs and feed back to us with any changes, but the idea is that the whole process is as efficient as possible to enable the Griffin Glasshouse team to focus on what they do best while we do what we do best.

And with a small sprinkle of Flourish magic dust

This is a bit of a work in progress, but you get the idea…

The next step is to create the look and feel for the rest of the pages once we know that these initial concepts are headed in the right direction. I’m really looking forward to seeing the impact the new design, navigation and structure have on the Griffin Glasshouse enquiry levels, and most importantly, their sales. Watch this space…

Tagged as in Branding, Case Studies, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Web Design, Websites

It seems like forever since I’ve shared a snapshot of some of our work from the studio doesn’t it? We’ve been incredibly busy over the last month or so working on some really exciting projects and I’m delighted to share a couple of them with you this week. First up… A stunning website design for Sport Surface Solutions.

We love to do things that shake things up a bit, get people to sit up and take notice of a company, and as ever, prove that design for small businesses can be just as well thought out, just as aspirational as design for the big boys. Chloe has really enjoyed the challenge of working on a very masculine, Winter design and I think she’s pulled it off with bells on.

Sport Surface Solutions do exactly what the name suggests. They install and maintain sports surfaces and are clearly doing the right thing getting their marketing literature in order right now in time for Olympic hysteria in the summer!

Chloe has developed a new logo design and brand identity as well as website design which ties the whole look together. Those of you that follow our passion for colour psychology will notice the Winter traits: strong colours, strong alignment and structure, premium feel and impactful images. There is no messing about here: this is a website design for a company that means business.

The designs are currently in the process of being finalised before we move on to the build (hence the positional rather than final images) but I will share the build with you once it’s complete… I hope you like

Tagged as , website design in Case Studies, From The Studio, Web Design, Websites

DR Solicitors are a niche law firm that specialise in law for the medical profession. I love DR Solicitors’ approach to business: flexible, expert and incredibly professional. Their new website really communicates their status as one of the leading niche law firms and certainly seems to be paying off in terms of attracting new business [...]

Tagged as in Web Design, Websites

Yehey! It’s been quite a week in the studio for getting websites live. Stuart has a number of quite chunky ecommerce sites to finish off this week and next but he certainly hasn’t been twiddling his thumbs recently! I have a whole host of delicious websites and blogs to share with you over the next [...]

Tagged as in Web Design, Websites

Hurray! Something gorgeous to look at! This is Chloe’s first draft for the eCommerce website design for Harvey Maria. What do you think? Remember the current website? Visually and structurally there was a lot to do. Make it feel more aspirational, easy to use and something that reflects our brand values and engages our target [...]

Tagged as , ecommerce web design, Harvey Maria, powerful ecommerce in Case Studies, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Powerful Ecommerce, Web Design, Websites

Visually this post isn’t going to be quite as exciting as the post that came before and the one that follows. But it’s an important part of the eCommerce website journey and one that I think is important to share with you. The Wireframes Between every website brief and website design comes the planning and [...]

Tagged as , ecommerce website design, Harvey Maria, powerful ecommerce in Case Studies, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Powerful Ecommerce, Web Design, Websites

I’m delighted to share our latest website design for Sera Golding’s MIB Band: The MIB Experience. Remember when I interviewed Sera back in the summer and she talked about the amazing upscale events they were playing – from Jewish weddings to large scale corporate events and private parties? Sera has an enormous range of quality [...]

Tagged as , MIB, mib music, Sera Golding in Case Studies, From The Studio, Web Design, Websites

I have been bursting to share this with you for longer than I can remember. We first met Emma de Polnay at our Focus and Flourish workshop in December where we helped Emma shape her vision for her business in 2011. Excitingly we then met with Emma again in June to talk about a rebrand [...]

Tagged as in Branding, Case Studies, From The Studio, Logo Design, Web Design, Websites

When was the last time you reviewed your website? I mean properly and objectively reviewed it, rather than just looked the other way when you opened the site by mistake? I always recommend my clients review their sites at least every six months, at the very least. It’s amazing how much your business will change, [...]

Tagged as in Online Marketing, Web Design, Websites