Method.
Whilst web design and branding are two slightly different specialities when it comes to design, the same method can apply to both. This method has been trialled and tested and proven to work for multiple projects throughout the last 5-10 years of my career.
1.
Discover
The discovery phase consists of heavy research, discussions and workshops to help understand your brand, business, and goals for the project. In this phase we will get to know each other on a first name basis and will help shape the rest of the project.
2.
Define
The most fun part - in this phase, we will experiment and explore different creative routes for your project to help define a direction. We will provide multiple concepts in this phase as well as a set of low-fidelity wireframes to understand the layout of your website.
3.
Design
Bringing it all together. In this phase we will have an agreed direction in style, and structure/layout from wireframes, therefore in this stage we will begin designing the website experience and building out a structured design system as we go.
4.
Deliver
Within the delivery phase, all of the designed brand comes together in a consolidated document such as a Brand Guidelines or Design System. This can be digital or exported as a PDF. During this phase we can also support with your rollout on social media/email channels.
Task breakdown.
Discover.
This phase is all about the research and discovering who you are, what you do and what we need to achieve. No one knows what your audience wants/needs more than your audience themselves, so in this phase we dive into the mindset of your target audience.
Brand workshop
A collaborative workshop where we will discuss your brand positioning, persona, values and more.
Audience personas
In this workshop we will determine 3 types of audiences who we want to target with the new brand.
Visual audit
(if any) We will review any existing brand assets you have to understand what to keep and what to evolve.
Competitor analysis
Visual audits of your selected 3 x industry competitors and 3 x aspirational brands.
Stakeholder interviews
A series of questions or face-to-face interviews with the key stakeholders of the brand.
Business model canvas
To help us better understand your business model, this helps us to understand the brand more.
Audience personas
In the persona workshop we will get into the mindset of 3 audience types to understand the requirements.
Decision based user flows
A collaborative workshop to understand how the audience accesses and uses the website to discover key features.
Information architecture
Breaking down the structure of the website and/or any categories or filters within the experience.
Competitor analysis
Visual audits of your selected 3 x industry competitors and 3 x aspirational brands.
Data insights
HotJar/Google Analytics data helps us understand your audience's age, gender, location, device, browser, etc.
Stakeholder interviews
A series of questions or face-to-face interviews with the key stakeholders of the brand.
Customer interviews
A series of questions or face-to-face interviews with the existing customers to understand their wants/needs.
Visual audit
We will review any existing brand assets or websites you have to understand the requirements.
Define.
The most fun phase, this is where all of the creative experiments begin and we start to define the direction of the brand or website. We can provide multiple routes in this stage for you to choose from, before we begin to finalise things in the next phase.
Brand design
Moodboards
Exploring design trends and specific design requirements to define a direction for the new brand.
Logo concepts
Exploring shapes, patterns and styles to create some logomark and emblem concepts to choose from.
Colour palette research
Exploring colours from images, psychology, industry and more to provide multiple palette options.
Typography research
Exploring free and paid fonts choices for the brand to provide multiple options and licensing solutions.
Iconography research
Exploring multiple styles of iconography and paid/free libraries to define a direction for the brand.
Illustration research
Exploring illustration styles and free/paid libraries to define a direction for the brand.
Photography research
Exploring photography styles, libraries and resources to define a direction for the brand.
Website design
Experiments & concepts
Creative ideation and experimentation to provide 3 creative options for the website direction,
Wireframes
Low-fidelity blueprints to determine the structure and layout of the website experience and user journeys.
Moodboards
Exploring design trends and specific design requirements to define a direction for the new website.
Base style guide set up
Based on the creative concepts, we can start to build a base style guide to determine fonts, colours and more.
Design.
This is the design phase, where we finalise all of the chosen outputs and options from the definition phase and produce high-fidelity brand and website designs. In this phase we gain approval of key pages and user journeys and can also user-test prototypes.
Brand design
Logomark & emblem finalising
Applying the final touches, sizes and simplifying the layer of the chosen logo design.
Colour palette
Condensing and finalising the colour palette chosen for your brand. We will also conduct colour contrast checks,
Typography & licensing
Finalising the chosen font, inspecting the license, and setting the print and digital style rules.
Accessibility tests
We will conduct colour and typography AA tests throughout this phase to ensure we are abiding by WCAG rules.
Illustration library
Finalising the chosen illustration style and designing an illustration library as an asset bank to choose from.
Icon library
Finalising the chosen icon style and designing an icon library as an asset bank to choose from.
Photography guides
Finalising the chosen photography style, providing library resources and guides to find images from.
Website design
UI Design
Applying the approved look and feel, and using wireframes as a guide, this stage is bringing it all to life with flat UI designs.
Prototyping
Focusing on key user journeys, we prototype flat UI designs to create clickable realistic experiences to trial.
Motion design
Bringing the experience to life, we can experiment with transitions and motion for some of the key components.
Design system
Using atomic design, all UI styles and components are consolidated and organised into a digital design system.
User testing
We can user-test key journeys and flows from the UI designs to gain qualitative feedback from real users.
Deliver.
At this phase, we bring everything together and wrap everything up to handover and support with rollout on your social channels. We will package up all assets and files to help hand over to your team or the development team.
Brand design
Brand guidelines
In PDF format, a set of application guidelines and rules around the brand we have designed.
Design system
In digital format, a Figma file containing all styles from the brand we have designed.
Social share support
We can support you with social share thumbnails, images or ads to help rollout your brand across social channels.
Asset packaging
A packaged up .ZIP file of all your brand assets including logo, fonts, icons, illustrations, images, and more.
Website design
Development handover
We will create functional and visual specifications alongside the design system to help handover to dev.
Asset packaging
A packaged up .ZIP file of all your web design including the figma file, and any exported graphics.
Social share support
We can support you with social share thumbnails, images or ads to help roll out your new website across channels.