Month: May 2023

Springfield Park Cafe – A Project About Trees

It seems that every culture loves trees. Some even worship them. I wouldn't suggest going that far, but if you wanted to, there are few better places to do it in London than Springfield Park Cafe.

When the proprietors of the Springfield Park Cafe in East London asked me to update their booklet showcasing all of the trees in the surrounding park, I was happy to take the job.

Because not every job involved inspiring subject matter. I have created print and web design for some very unappealing items. One of the first jobs I ever had back in the late eighties involved creating a catalogue for a medical facility who specialised in incontinence. Trying to find the aesthetics in that project was a real challenge.

Because this was a redesign, the structure of the brochure was more or less set. There would be minimal editorial input so the job would be to reinterpret the material.

Unusually the first thing to do was just wait. The brief was given to me in the depths of winter and I needed a sunny day in Spring in order to wander around the park with my camera.

Once I had acquired the photography that I needed the next thing to do was come up with a concept. My main concern with the previous edition was that it had not been designed to fit the medium. The booklet is only A5 and as such the large amounts of text were rendered in a somewhat cramped fashion.

This was not a problem which would ever be completely overcome. However, by eliminating excess clutter on the pages and using the differences in type to set the boundaries between data entries, I managed to clean up the layout and giving the text on the catalogues some breathing space.

SEO driven content – design and copy for HD Storage Solutions

Creating a website for a Transport and Warehousing company based in the Midlands characterised by SEO driven content.

You have to admire someone who sets up a businesses during a global pandemic. This is exactly what HD Storage Solutions did in 2021, setting up a combined transport and warehousing facility near Coventry. This was one of the first projects where the need for SEO driven content was a requirement from the start.

This project began as a 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 open-minded and willing to listen. Moreover, he was happy for me to write the copy and to design the site with SEO as the primary driver.

Just my type

SEO driven content

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 in-between. 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 appear to be somewhat aggressive.

Imagery came from a variety of sources. Transport by its very nature is a dynamic enterprise so the idea was to represent the idea of movement throughout.

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 while keeping the copy static.

In accordance with Google's preference, I have completely moved away from the idea of single page sites. That said, a home page should contain some essential information from each section of the site. This lead to creating the horizontal content bands that run down the page with SEO driven content from each section presented in each one.

Social Media Templates for Gradient Racing – layers upon layers of design

Gradient Racing are a motor sports team with an all female driver roster. They currently compete in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship. They came to me before the start of the current season, looking for an adaptable series of social media templates.

The client was looking for a number of different social media templates in different sizes Portrait (1080 x 1920 pixels), Square (2025x2025 pixels), and Landscape (1920 x 1080 pixels).

Social Media Templates - 1 x 1

We used the size above to crate social media templates for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

In addition, we produced the templates as layered files in Photoshop which covered:

  • Quotes
  • Race schedules
  • Qualifying results
  • Race results

I was initially inspired by the creative work for the car livery. The car was covered in a chaotic fractal pattern of various shades of green and black on a white background.

Social Media Templates - 16 x 9

Inspired by the triangular shapes, I used a series of similar overlapping three sided shapes to mark out the separate areas of each template. Additionally, I used a similar diamond pattern of transparent white layers overlaid on images of the car for the text area.

In the end the multi layered look proved to be extremely effective. Moreover, it has become something of a signature look for the agency that commissioned me.