Branding & Website

Cornerstone GC

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Role

Designer

Start

July 2020

Completion

August 2020

01.-

Brief

Problem statement

This project already had developer resource behind it, so only design was needed. The website required modernising as the previous one had been developed several years ago as a placeholder to showcase their services and did not add the value to their business that a modern and functional website would. Competitors within the sector had recently updated their websites and the team did not want to fall behind in terms of online presence.

I had free reign over this design as the site was to be custom built and the business had little to no previously established brand.

02.-

The Design

To stand out in a space where competitors all tend to copy each other and not show any real innovation through their digital presence.

A key downfall of many current websites is their similarity, particularly between competitors in a given space. In a crowded competitive environment, this site build needed to stand out to promote the client above the competition. Competitor analysis revealed patterns forming in terms of style and imagery amongst similar websites. The team had a great existing photography resource already, and a lot more can be done to images to elevate them beyond simply applying filters as many of the competitors seemed to be doing - and whom had inadvertently started to look generic in doing so, such as layering with graphics, simple typography overlays or masks to work with the imagery rather than have it as this static element on the page.

I wanted the website to have a natural flow, with the use of whitespace to help the content feel like it had room to breathe. My thought around this and the simplicity tied into it also came from a UX perspective. Being conscious of the need to balance aesthetic concerns with functionality, I deliberately used of a selection of neutral colours that not only complemented each other, but that did not compromise on accessibility guidelines - ensuring all colour combinations met WCAG AA standard. The simpler the design, the less likely it is to compromise on WCAG standards. Bearing in mind a website's entire user base demographics in this way is extremely important, and as a designer and developer it is part of my job to keep raising awareness for accessible websites.

Also bearing in mind functionality, and as with any website design I undertake, I ensured that it was made up of components where possible (including everything from text, buttons and headers ranging all the way to components made up of multiple elements). Not only does this reduce development resource, but it makes the website more responsive and expandable in the future. In essence, this makes the life of the development teams much easier!

03.-

The Outcome

The outcome

With all of the above factors kept clearly in mind throughout the design process, the result was a clean, professional website design which the client was extremely pleased with and approved with essentially no adjustments (which is a big win in any designer's book!).

The website has now been built by their development team and the componentised design is allowing them to keep growing the website as needed. While new pages will require a design, the developers can still iterate on the website on a smaller scale.