Project Overview

Having completed their brand design work several years ago, the directors at WK Design Architects approached Sarah Kate Designs about a custom build website for their business.

Whilst we'd looked at a website design as part of their initial branding package, times and tastes had changed. Cal and Paul felt it was time that their brand evolved to reflect the work they were producing, and wanted to pursue a contemporary and minimal design aesthetic.

This meant that the project needed to incorporate a brand refresh in addition to a new website.

Project Approach

During the discovery process it was clear that the directors, wanted to pursue a more minimal aesthetic, preferring darker, moodier hues. They decided that the website should focus on residential clientele.

With the new brief requiring a contemporary and minimal design aesthetic, the previous brand identity needed a refresh, which started by pairing the colour and graphic devices right back to a simple black or white logo.

During the design process we tested out several colour combinations for the web pages; the clients opted for a dark website with a single strong energetic orange accent colour, carried over from the previous branding project.

To keep costs down I designed and built a four-page website, incorporating a client editor and CMS to help the clients upload and manage their own content and portfolio pages:

• Home Page
• About Page
• Portfolio Page Template
• Project Page Template

The client had a good selection of personnel photos, meaning that we could include the faces of the people their clients would be working with into the site design. This is an important but often overlooked detail for potential clients who like to see the faces behind the brand.

I also included hand-drawn architectural sketches, throughout the design, a visual reminder of the bespoke architectural design and expertise that WK Design offers its clientele.

The project process included: Client consultation, website design, website & CMS build, website testing, and CMS training.

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Project Results

The end result is a clean and easy-to-navigate, custom-built four-page website that enables the client to showcase their portfolio and update their new website with new projects as needed.

The company logo remained the same, and the brand style was refreshed in line with the new direction the Directors chose for the website. The fact that their existing logo adapted to this new brand style is testament to the strength of the original logo design.

Happily, the new website ranks highly on Google for key search terms such as: architects in Cumbria, and architects in Cockermouth. While I may not offer SEO services, as part of any website build I will endeavour to optimise the web content, including meta tags, keywords, description, title, alt tags and any text provided by the Client.

These SEO results along with the design, branding and reputation of the company, continue to translate into a steady stream of customer enquiries through the new website, and ongoing work for the architectural firm.