OUGD603 / Website Design & Branding / Live Brief / Evaluation

Website Design & Branding / Live Brief

Evaluation

This brief ended up being bigger than I anticipated as when designing the website for the Furniture Restoration Business I also had to brand it too. Having ongoing communication with the client was extremely beneficial for this as I was able to understand exactly what the client wanted, and therefore meet his needs as closely as possible. 

Having feedback from peers in the studio was also valuable. There were some things the client suggested that didn’t visually work from a design perspective, and when asking peers for feedback they supported my decisions which made me feel more confident when telling the client.

Catering to the target audience was a challenge as it is one I have never designed for before (typically older, interested in antiques or antique dealers). Looking at the the clients competitors, other furniture restorers websites has a very corporate, sometimes dated aesthetic. After talking to the client it was clear he wanted to stay away from this and have something a lot more sophisticated and modern. When talking to the client I wrote down key words from the conversation which were ‘classical, Georgian 18th century’ and by doing this I was able to refer back to these while designing to keep the clients vision close. By taking inspiration from clean, contemporary websites such Cereal Magazines I was able to generate ideas for a sleek, minimal but classic tone of voice. 

I nearly let the target audience slip when sizing the body copy to a fairly small point, this was purely for aesthetic reasons although after referring back to the brief I resized the text to bigger in order to cater for the older audience. 

I found this brief very rewarding as the client said they were extremely happy with the finished outcome. Gathering feedback from peers as well as people external from the course throughout designing was very helpful. Once finished, peers said the tone of voice of the website conveys classicalness through the sophisticated serif typeface. I am glad the website design was successful in this aspect as it is something very important to the client.