Oystercatchers Holiday Cottage Camber

So for this latest project I was asked to design an entire range of marketing material for the customers, this included Website, leaflets, Logo and even some stickers for marmalade and Jam pots.

Initial Planning

Logo and colour choice, while this began the customers chose a name for the cottage - Oystercatchers. This we deemed showed that it was good for birdwatchers but without alienating families who were looking for something near the sea but might not know the connection with something less obvious.

From there I had a few ideas but the main one revolved around making a bird in flight look as basic as possible so that it could be used in a vector style design.

Here you can see the type of bird I was using and the variations in flight angle that I could use.

This I decided showed the most shape to the bird and colours however I did like the look of it with both wings up.

Here is my initial ideas

The clients liked this idea of the other designs so I went ahead using this.

Leaflet

The first issue here was getting a decision on how many sides and the size of the leaflet. To make this easier we collected a large number of competitors flyers/leaflets and any that we liked the look of and laid them all out. This was a very simple way to find the clients needs and preferences, size, colour, fonts layouts were all roughly agreed upon, I went back and made a few ideas of fronts and backs, here are the two final ideas:
    Front                                                                           Back

  

These were about the 5th or 6th edit, there weren't really any big changes the key this was the readability, I enlarged some text, removed others and simplified the map. We all liked these and after some editing to the photo's to lighten some up and make the roof look a little tidier it was off to the printers.

Note: Always make sure you image is saved as CMYK for this otherwise it will usually come back looking not quite as bright as it the RGB that you would have been looking at one your screen. Easiest option is to always work in CMYK and when working online use websafe colours so there is no change on different browsers.

Website

With the rough idea on leaflets sorted through seeing others I used the same method to help diagnose their true wishes for the site.
The key parts that we were aiming for was a "light" site in more than one way, firstly keeping it bright with a white background and also something that is simple and not too overwhelming.
For such a simple design I decided a basic wordpress site would be most efficient so with an appropriate theme installed (lenora) I began.
The header

This I found showed not only the name but also what the site was about and roughly where while also covering up some of the wordpress theme's standard header.

I then took a few photo's of the site for use in the galler (gallery) and on each page before creating the front page (Holiday Cottage Home page).

From here the further pages were designed each with an important section just below the menu, such as an image, map on where it is or a booking calender. To complete the booking and gallery NEOgallery and Bookings plugings were both used. The site was created entirely using free plugings and themes keeping costs down while still keeping it simple enough so that the owners can organise bookings without need for technical support.

Check out the site here: Camber Holiday Cottage

All of my designed sites are hosted at JustHost and usually purchased through GoDaddy.

For further detail, a breakdown on any of my work or interested in having me design for you please don't hesitate to contact me or visit my site - www.rupertcawtedesigns.com

Real Beauty health spa (MR Design)

A project created for a friends family member, they needed a very simple website created for their beauty salon/ spa.
As a designer this was simple enough for me to come up with the concepts and then my flatmate would create the coding and put the pieces together.
We thought this could be a good practice and if it worked possibly go into webdesign together, I put our first names together to form MR and then added design at the end, simple...company name done - MR Design.

Initially I send them a few colour schemes as without going to the shop and speaking to them it was difficult to obtain information about them as their emails were not very specific.
Here are some of the colour schemes I sent:

I was hoping they would use one of three colour choices, for this reason I places it at the top of each box. I also mentioned that if there were any colours in one and not in the other then to let me know and we could mix and match a little. They decided to go for colours in the earth box (top left) however the 3rd strip down which was not one I would have chosen myself however I followed their brief and created a home page.

The design was just a quick concept so that they might see how it would look before I created the other pages. The font I used was Helvetica however this may have been changed depending on if they already employed a specific font for their other items, leaflets, banners, shop front etc.

As it may be apparent I didn't completely to the colours chosen, when working with this I found that it needed something to lighten it  and clean it up so added the light blue but still with the earthy feel to keep it in the correct area. The company had a few issues and so the whole website plan fell through leaving us with nothing, first lesson of design take some type of deposit or just be lucky.

Website design and building

Over the past few months I have been working on a few new companies and their websites:
My design site - www.offaxisideas.com - this shows all my latest products and future designs
Secret Santa Presents - www.secretsantapresents.com - this is an online shop selling fun novelty products
Secret Santa - www.secretsantapresents.info a blog and site about all the latest great products and Xmas gifts
Freeze Frame - www.freeze-frame.eu - a camera hire company based in the alps, hiring, filming and editing footage for holiday makers.

Check them out and see what you think.
Some of the sites have taken a lot of time, the others I quickly designed. The SEO and back linking seems to be one of the hardest parts.
If you have any thoughts on any of the sites I would love to hear them.