Website

Creating a website for a Transport and Warehousing company based in the Midlands.

You have to admire someone who sets up a businesses during a global pandemic. This is exactly what HD Storage Solutions did in 2021.

This project began as an almost blank sheet. As assets go went there was a logo and that was it. No images, no copy and no real idea of how to balance the two parts of the business in marketing terms.

My biggest asset on the job was the client himself. He was willing to try every idea proposed and was happy for me to write the copy and to design the site with SEO as the primary driver.

I have wanted to use Open Sans on a project for a while and this was the perfect opportunity.

Open Sans is a work of art. It can used with equal effect for headings, text, menus, buttons, and everything inbetween. You can't say that about every typeface. It even works in all caps for the headlines, something that I am normally reluctant to do because it can be a bit aggressive.

I no longer use or encourage sliders for home page content. However, I did like the idea of rotating the underlying image at the top of the home page which keeping the copy static.

By now I had completely moved away from the idea of single page sites. However, I was still of the option that the home page should contain some distillation of essential information from each section fo the site. This lead to the horizontal bands running down the page.

Website Design and Copy Writing

Building a website for a UK enterprise working with innovative companies to produce environmentally sustainable products for western markets.

IndeProducts is an international partnership looking to source the best and most innovate sustainable products in the food and tech sectors, for UK and European markets.

Starting with eBikes and following on with the latest developments in portable solar technology, the company needed a website to explain it's vision and showcase it's existing partnerships.

Sometimes you find yourself starting from a less than ideal place. In this case the Logo had been designed by the client themselves. This included both the typography and the visual of the elephant.

Both elements were visually weak and their old-fashioned feel was inappropriate for a company which was positioning itself on the junction of two ultra-modern trends, technology and eco-friendly design.

On the other hand we had some excellent product shots from several of their partners.

As is often the case, the copy of the site had not been considered prior to beginning the project.

When we started the clients were worried that too much emphasis on the partner brands would not be productive. However, I eventually managed to convince them that their connections and the networks which those partnerships demonstrated was more or less their USP.

Visually I used the idea of the flag of India's colours to frame each page. The idea of using diagonal lines came from the fact that you almost never see a flag in real life square on. It's always at an angle.

Website Redesign

Redesigning a website for a high quality furniture retailer.

Welchome are a Chelsea based, Italian furniture retail outlet specialising in high quality home furnishings. They also offer a successful bespoke design service for business and residential interiors.

They approached me to update their website in late 2015. Their previous design was nearly six years old and was visually dated and cramped. The existing site was only partially responsive and the content management system was extremely limited.

The brief was to create a site that presented the visual quality of their products in a far more appealing fashion. They also required a comprehensive, yet simple Content Management System as they were continually updating their online catalogue with new products.

The design of the site, which had previously been cramped and visually chaotic, was pared down with white backgrounds and minimal design. The previous typeface was replaced with Raleway, a light elegant geometric web font. The colour scheme was mostly comprised of neutral greys designed to place greater emphasis on the excellent product photography.

On the home page, the layout is dominated by a full-with carousel which allows the sheer quality of Welchome's product range to shine through.

The site was built around WordPress with the basic Content Management System expanded to allow for control of products, interior design, news and catalogues.

Website Redesign for Music Composer

Kyan Laslett is a commercial composer working primarily in the TV and film industries. His website provides a portfolio of his work across various platforms.

Kyan came to me because his website had three issues. The design was overly fussy, it did not work across all devices, and although it had a content management system, that system was too complicated for for a non-developer to use (which pretty much invalidates the whole point of having a CMS in the first place).<

Simplifying the visual appearance of the site made the remaining tasks easier. Minimal layouts are desirable in and of themselves. However, they also naturally lend themselves to responsive adaptation.

Each page eventually consisted of a mosaic of tiles representing Kyan's work through the years. On PCs and laptops the accompanying text would appear when the user rolled over each image. However, on tablets and phones (where there is no rollover state), the text appeared permanently underneath the images.

The CMS was tricky because the client needed to use a number of different external hosts for his Portfolio samples, Youtube, Vimeo and SoundCloud. Other posts only required still images and text. The CMS had to handle all of these smoothly while the design had to incorporate the different media seamlessly.