It's not often that I get to flex my design muscles for client jobs. I usually leave them in the incredibly capable hands of my design team: Caroline, Rob and Chloe. But this month I fancied a challenge! Claire Brown runs successful gardening company Plantpassion and came to us with an exciting brief:
Create a design for her website that would capture the energy and inspiration that her company delivers. Claire's husband is an IT programmer and he built her current website, so she asked us to create a brand manual for her and mock up a design for a website homepage that he could then construct.
We love a design challenge so I set to work.
Here's Claire's current website:
It's ok, but to be honest it lacks impact. The photograph isn't great, the white background means that the page just seems to float off and the testimonial looks slightly out of place. The blue font doesn't really fit with the branding – which is strong and inspiring. The blue looks rather insipid and out of place by contrast. Crucially, there are no contact details in the header – an absolute essential when you're creating a website.
Claire and I both agreed that the new design needed to have much more visual punch. Claire had noticed that the number of email enquiries she received through her site had dwindled, despite the number of hits increasing – so we needed to invite people to interact with Claire.
Here's my mockup for Claire's new website.
What do you think? Claire is pretty chuffed and if I'm honest I am rather strutting round like a pigeon at the moment! The images add a lot more punch, visual impact and most importantly, help people work out where they want to go next (something I've been meaning to add to my own site for some time but you know the saying, cobblers shoes…).
The handwriting font adds a touch of Claire's personality and encourages people to engage with her. The pink is an unexpected touch for a gardener, but one that works well with her logo and marks her out from all the other Surrey gardeners! Personally I love the envelope which just adds another visual reminder to connect with Claire. And if you look very closely, you might spot a pregnant gardener in amongst her vegetables who designed the website. 
What do you think?
