As we’d already designed (and built) the Hanging Space website, once we had finalised the logo designs they slotted nicely into the space at the top. We’d designed the logos and brand identity to work with our new website design because when we design a website, even if we’re not creating a new logo, we still want to get to the heart of the brand and design something with the right feel, does that make sense? And so it all slotted together rather nicely.

You’ll notice a conspicuous absence of the crocodile skin texture on the website: that was deliberate! It’ll make a beautiful splash on the printed literature, but we really felt it best to keep things simple and elegant on the website itself.

The Product Pages

Simple, elegant and image rich, each product page is designed to create a feeling of desire!

This experience page is fully editable and gives visitors a glimpse into what they can expect.

And Space Magazine. We love this! Elaine just doesn’t have the time to write a blog, but completely understands the importance of great content and so we came up with the idea of creating an online magazine for her which she can edit through her content management system. A magazine doesn’t need updating daily or weekly, and so we are looking forward to this giving Hanging Space the perfect balance between current content and not too much work.

Remember the old website?

Quite a transformation I hope you’ll agree! We’re really looking forward to seeing the impact this is going to have on the business and can’t wait to start work on some of the printed collateral.

I’ve been looking forward to sharing this project with you for quite some time now and I’m just delighted to be able to reveal the Hanging Space rebrand and new website design. This has been quite an extensive project, with a rebrand, new website design and shopfront design so I’ll be splitting this out over a couple of posts just so I don’t overwhelm you!

Elaine Palmer is the creative force behind Hanging Space, a Weybridge, Surrey based company who design and build bespoke, fitted furniture. The Hanging Space product is incredibly high end and bespoke, and their original website design just didn’t communicate that.

The original website

Elaine originally came to us with a very cool and clever logo she’d just had designed with another agency, ready to have us create a gorgeous and commercial website design. After much planning we developed a stunning design for the homepage as well as some really cool ideas for the site structure.

Iteration One

Whilst the logo ticked many of the boxes, as time went on, Elaine realised that it just didn’t feel right. And I get that – Elaine is highly creative and very feminine, and is working in a very high end market and so whilst the logo looked smart, it made sense to look at the logo design. The funky logo you see above is certainly very clever conceptually (the font plays on the idea of space, as does the icon) but it feels very masculine and cold.

Our philosophy is that when you connect you with your business and your customer you create a brand that’s incredibly powerful. I always think there’s a lot that you can do with a brand identity without necessarily needing to change a logo, but as Elaine was having a new shopfit and sign it made sense to be sure that this was right. And so she invited us to create a new logo design for her. I want to share that with you next.

Focus matters more than smart

A very good friend of mine (shall we call her Jane?) bought a business eighteen months ago and since then has worked like a trojan with her business partner to grow the sales. Whilst my friend comes from a recruitment background as has no knowledge of the industry, her business partner worked in the business for ten years before they purchased the company, so they certainly know a thing or two between them.

But despite this knowledge and my Jane’s discipline at the selling, business isn’t easy. In fact, it’s incredibly tough for them.

Now branding is no magic wand for a failing business, but when you’re working as hard as Jane is, it’s something that will really make a difference. I look at their website and whilst it may be smart, it’s boring. More than that, it’s confusing and they’re missing opportunities. Jane and I were talking last week and she said “I know we need a new website” but the thing is, if they just create a new website they’re not really fixing the problem.

The real challenge

Before they race out and have a new (smart) website developed, they need to ask themselves: how do we create a brand that is irresistible to our most profitable customers?

Right now, Jane’s website looks the same as most of her competitors and that’s not doing them any favours. In being similar the only differential is price.

Jane’s company sells and provides training for voice recognition software (the stuff that you dictate onto a dictaphone and then it types up what you say). Jane’s website looks like a software house. Shouldn’t it look like an approachable, friendly and efficient business that can train their customers to save time? Shouldn’t they look like a business that are easy to work with? Surely you don’t want this software unless you’re busy, surely you don’t need the training unless you’re not technically savvy? I look at the website as a business owner and it terrifies me.

I really wish I could show you screenshots to illustrate the point but it wouldn’t be fair. And really the point is that this isn’t about the website, this is about their brand, their focus.

This is about creating a brand that sets Jane’s business apart from her competitors, one that makes the company utterly irresistible and engaging to their ideal clients, one that reconnects Jane and her business partner with the business again. One that re-energises them and most of all, makes doing business easier.

Creating a website that looks the same as your competitors is the easy route. Taking three steps back to think about the focus for your business, what you want to be known for and why your customers really do business with you is much harder. And it can be scary. You’re going against the tide, creating something that’s breaking industry norms, and you need to be very confident that you’re doing the right thing. But it’s exciting isn’t it?

Ta da! The brand, spanking new website for the Branding Masterclass is now live, and with the next class less than four weeks away, I wanted to share the design with you.

I’m not one to hang about (as my team will testify) and so when I made the decision to launch our first masterclass back in late November 2011 I knew we had our work cut out preparing the “classroom” (aka the blog), the brand, a promo video, writing the content and the sales copy as well as all the back end admin it takes to run a course. We did a LOT in that two-ish months and fitting in a stand alone website was always going to be impossible. But I did want to pull one together for the next class.

Both James and Stuart have worked incredibly hard to pull this together before Easter, and I want to say a very big and public thank you to both of them (and Caroline) for making sure the site was ready. I know it wasn’t easy, especially with your current workload, but it is very much appreciated.

The Designs

The designs are very much rooted in the brand identity James created back in January for my masterclass classroom. I wanted everything to feel clean, easy to read and welcoming but also with some substance. This isn’t airy fairy stuff, despite the prolific use of flowery pictures! There’s real, commercial meat behind what I’m writing about, even if much of it is delivered in a light and easy to understand way. And so I love James’ use of type, colour and white space.

There’s a bit of work to be done after the Easter hols on the about page – I wanted to put a quick showreel together of our work for anyone that hadn’t come via our website or blog, so we’ll add that in over time. We also plan to integrate our event booking system into the website and be done with the horrible shopping cart once and for all! But I think that realistically that’s going to need to wait until after May…

We wanted to bring the testimonials to life and as they’re such a photogenic bunch, the social media avatars work quite well don’t you think?

You can see the website in action over at brandingmasterclass.com

One of my favorite designers Mike Kus has recently given a talk called ‘Designing for Humans’. The talk explored the concept of creating meaningful visual designs with easy-to-use functionality in order to create an overall improved user experience.

As part of this talk he did an unauthorised re-align of the Innocent brand. As they are a perfect example of a fun, creative company with a strong and recognisable brand who’s current website doesn’t reflect their company’s personality.

“Innocent are a fun and creative company with a strong and recognisable brand. They have a lust for life, promote healthy living and are environmentally conscious. These values, brand attributes and personality don’t come across on their current site. I had a go at realigning their homepage to better reflect the Innocent brand.”

The point of this inspirational time-lapse video was to demonstrate the importance of communicating the personality of a company on it’s website – making it more human.

He recorded the entire design process and sped it up to 3 minutes and 59 seconds.

I think you’ll like it and draw as much design inspriation from it as I do.

Innocent’s Current Site

Mikes re-design

I’m really excited to share our initial concept for Mamami by Chet’s new website design and rebrand. We’ve been working with Chet now for a number of weeks to get to the heart of her brand and come up with a more compelling and irresistible way to communicate with her ideal clients.

Mamami’s Current Website

You often hear me talk about weak, good and powerful design and Chet’s website is a great example of a good design. It looks smart (ok, so I don’t love the legs on the mum but the rest is good), there’s clearly been some thought into the design and it’s well laid out. It’s only when you step aside and gain a strong vision for the brand that you realise the missed opportunities. And this is why I get so excited about what we do. Because we can see the vision for a brand and how we can communicate more effectively when the client can only see what’s in front of them. And it’s this vision (and ability to execute the vision) that has a huge impact on a business.

Strategist extraordinare, Bronwyn, worked on the brand positioning and ideal client: the career woman who needs a classic bag to take her from baby classes to the gym to lunch with friends, a business meeting with the bank manager and back to the playdate again. And came up with the fabulous strapline: Beautiful on Purpose.

Chloe has then led the design which totally reworks the brand identity into something much more aspirational, editorial and desirable.

Initial Homepage Design

This homepage mockup is the first stage, we now need to take Chet’s feedback on board and refine this design as well as create templates for the product pages and category page (this is an ecommerce site). But we’re excited! And I know that Chet is incredibly excited too…

The logo stays the same for now, but isn’t it interesting the impact that all the elements around a logo can have? Often we get asked to redesign a logo when in actual fact it’s the brand identity that needs attention. The editorial font, strong colours and stylish shapes really create a look and feel that we’ve planned will appeal directly to Chet’s ideal client. I can’t wait to see the impact it has when the site goes live!

The Griffin Glasshouses rebrand and website went live last week and I’m so pleased to share it with you on the blog. Thanks to a fabulous copywriter and marketer (Louisa Winter of My Marketing Person) who worked with us and the Griffin team to pull everything together, this website has been pretty quick to launch: just three months from start to finish, which given the size of the site and the number of templates to be created, is pretty blooming quick. I guess it just goes to show what you can achieve with a bit of gumption and a bucket full of enthusiasm?

I think I showed you the original website back in December - remember that? I always love it when we create a look that reflects where a business is right now. Griffin Glasshouses have a great business; long established, great reputation and excellent at what they do. They’ve also recently launched a collection with the NGS which I think just cements their status as experts. But their last site was doing them no favours in terms of positioning their business as a quality and aspirational brand.

I hope you’ll agree that the rebrand does just that. And isn’t it amazing what you can achieve with the right colours, elegant brand patterns and some cute illustrations?

The photographs are exactly the same as Griffin had on their old site, but by being more discerning about the ones we choose, and by using them in a different way, they have a totally different feel don’t they?

You can see the website in all it’s glory over here, and if you are thinking about ordering your dream glasshouse, maybe you’ll consider Griffin Glasshouses?

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

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…

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