Personally, it’s been a huge year of learning, experimenting and pushing our design boundaries to achieve some really cool results for our clients. I haven’t always gotten it right on the first go, and sometimes, I’ve finished projects and felt like I knew less than ever before. But I’m fairly sure that the less you realise you know, the more space you have to grow.
It’s a bit of a buzzword, “rebrand”. I think often, when a business needs to “re-brand”, it’s not that they need to formulate or manufacture a new persona or new direction. For an authentic rebrand, it’s more important to strip away what doesn’t align with the business.
For established and successful small businesses, it’s probably pretty likely that a lot of business is word of mouth and that they’re already operating in a way that is authentic to them. The issue is that, for whatever reason, their communication channels misrepresent this. Often their digital assets are simply a product of their time and just beyond outdated. For some, their visual branding has never been on point.
Ollie recently shared a post on LinkedIn by Luke Wroblewski - there is no escaping the fact that things are just always changing. Products, services, operations and the societal context in which the business operates change. As do technologies and capabilities within the digital space, and so the work is never really done. Redesigning is “an essential part of the process.”
It was tough to narrow this list down to just a handful, as there have been so many awesome projects and clients we’ve worked with.
The Nature School are an incredible educational establishment, with values that closely align with ours as a company. So, it was an honour to be able to undertake this redesign.
Their existing site didn’t at all reflect the depth of the organisation and took away from the professionalism and legitimacy of the school.
With this redesign, I wanted to really communicate the essence of the school. When you walk in you really feel the calmness of the environment, the passion of the teachers and the joy of all the students. Really top-quality professional photography by Natalie O’Donnell made my job a whole lot easier on this one.
From a functional point of view, we wanted to make the information as easily accessible as possible, but with so much, it was quite a challenge. A lot of designing and redesigning went into the information architecture of this site.
We also wanted to make life easier for admin at the school, so we built in a range of custom application enrolment and waiting list forms to streamline their processes.
I think it was the first time I felt brave enough to completely throw out everything that was existing within their old website and branding and present the client with something very new.
Bago Woodworks creates some incredibly cool architectural woodwork, so I opted for a minimalist approach, with the imagery and whitespace as the dominant features of the website. There’s nothing I could write that could demonstrate the quality of their work better than just showing it, so I wanted to give it space to breathe.
Similarly to The Nature School, high-end photography by Claudia Lim does most of the heavy lifting. Bago Woodworks do everything with the utmost attention to detail so it is absolutely essential that the quality of the images reflected this.
The old website no longer reflected the focus of their business, so it was still necessary to rewrite all of the copy. I wanted it to be simple and concise and act more as a guide for users to engage with the imagery. I kept the font clean and subtle to avoid any competition with the imagery.
All you need to know aesthetically is that it was very much a product of its time. Growers Market has been around since forever and Port Macquarie would not be the same without it.
I couldn’t be more excited to work on the rebrand of such an established and well-loved business. We worked with Dylan again on this one, who really nailed the new logo and branding. It was really important to emphasise the heritage and long-standing presence of the business within the community, which is why I wanted to really utilise the new stamp-style logo for maximum impact.
It feels like what it always should have been. The main aim for this project wasn’t necessarily to drive more sales or traffic but really to convey Bryan & Hayley's vibrancy and ethos authentically. A lot of people know Growers, but not a lot of people know that the produce they're buying came in on the truck that morning. So to reflect this, I wanted to make the site as colourful as possible without descending into visual chaos. To find the balance I opted for both super vibrant photography and subtle hand-drawn elements with plenty of white space. Keeping the bold blocks of green both as background and for the text guides the eye through the site.
Our top three weren't chosen purely on aesthetic design, but also because the final result felt truly aligned with the client.
Our aim has always been to create digital spaces that not only captivate and engage but also genuinely represent the ethos and vision of each client.
I believe one of the most essential components of web design, especially within the context of small business, is authenticity. Authenticity doesn't mean staying static, as a business continually evolves it's inevitable that certain representations of that business will no longer be accurate. This is why we believe in the importance of the redesign to maintain a genuine connection to your customers. It's not just about aesthetic revamps, it’s also about updating the story your online presence tells.
If this has got you thinking that maybe it's time for your business website to receive a redesign, feel free to have a chat with us!