Let's Build: A Consultancy Website - Part 2

Let's Build: A Consultancy Website Part 2 kicks off with a meeting between Alyssa and myself to discuss sources of inspiration.

During this phase, I get a feel for what types of styles Alyssa likes. From our quick meeting, I jotted down a few notes to keep in mind during the design phase to come:

• Use white space as an advantage
• Typography needs to be bold and beautiful. Consider mixing serifs and san serifs for full effect.
• The color palette should be simple but eye-catching throughout. Again promote white space.
• Branded images will be a large focus. These will need to be treated with text on the image itself and have various photo effects applied.
• The overall feel of the site needs to be personable. Alyssa wants her prospects to feel like they know her before even establishing communication.
• We need to shoot photography and plan to do so in the series to come.

Getting Information from a Client

Many clients I've dealt with in the past aren't as easy to work with as Alyssa is in this video. I realize this and understand that struggle. Some clients have hired me to do it all and provide very little to no information about themselves and/or business. This is pretty frustrating but I have found that once you start showing your client "visuals" they then begin to talk.

I would recommend giving them a taste of "what could be" and once you get that far, share it with them. They in return will hopefully get excited to see what happens next and ultimately be easier to work with. What you share initially shouldn't be final by any means. Make sure your client is aware of this. I would present it as initial ideas rather than a real design comp.

Design Styleguide: The Next Step

Having done this process so many times, I have found ways to make the best use of my time. Most of my designs aren't complete before heading to code and this is because I almost always finish in the browser. For this reason, and much more is why I insist on creating a design style guide before designing anything at all. With fundamental elements and components in place, you're prepared enough to take on the site as a whole.

Sadly showing just a style guide to a client doesn't quite connect with them. For this reason, I usually design comp for only the major pages of the site. I'll continue on in the next part of this series developing this style guide as well as showing different options for styles altogether.

Be sure to stay tuned!

The Series So Far

• Part 1