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Perth 3d visualisation master, Peter Castagna, along with his wife, Kristie, who is a talented interior stylist and blogger, have recently launched their brand new business, living 3d. I was honoured to be chosen as their designer to bring their brand and website to life. Today, I'm thrilled to add this new project to my portfolio, and excited to walk you through my creative process in this post.

During our first client meeting, we discussed the vision for their business and the direction of the new brand. They had already pulled together images and colours on an inspiration board, which acted as a starting point of my design process.

During the first week I came up with three separate concepts for their logo. The chosen logo, the one in the image below, was the result to take the "L" for 'living', create a 3d effect, isolate the shadows and round the corners. This concept explains the heart and essence of this business: transforming 2d drawings into 3d interior designs.

A lower case informal typography and a 'happy' feel was also part of the design brief. That's why we agreed on a light green colour that in brand psychology represents 'life'. This concept is also aligned with the company motto: bringing plans to life.

The website had to continue that soothing and restful feel. It had to be a reflexion of how they do business. They create functional and stylish spaces, so that's exactly what I've tried to achieve here as well: a functional but stylish website design, uncomplicated and relaxed.

Going with a simple design allows my client's portfolio to shine with no distractions and the message to be delivered with clarity.

“From the first meeting with Rosa for a coffee, we knew she was the right “woman for the job”…. From brand development, electronic stationary, business card design right through to a fantastic website she has exceeded all of our expectations all at fantastic prices, making this the perfect one stop shop for your next project.”

— Peter Castagna, Creative Director of living 3d

Are you interested in working with me for the design of your brand and website? Visit my Branding and Web design pages for more information on design packages and pricing, and my Contact page to get in touch!

Client: Collected Interiors
Project: Art Direction, Photo Editing, UI/UX, Web Design and Development
Date: Launched in September, 2014

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Collected Interiors website designed by Grafika Studio

I am a big fan of Perth interior designers Collected Interiors, so when I was asked to re-designed their website I immediately felt excited about this project.

The briefing was to create a sleek and modern new website, to display bigger images and to incorporate some interactive tools.

I created a custom-made design – no templates were used here – carefully thought to let the images shine. Full screen images in almost every page allow the visitor to get a taste of the designers' talent before even visiting their portfolio.

The design is simple and clean so that visitors can enjoy the beautiful photographs with no distractions. Condense typography, combined with serif fonts for a classy elegant touch, and a lot of white empty space achieve a modern and professional look & feel.

 

INSIDE A RESPONSIVE DESIGN

One of the major improvements made on this website was the responsive layout. The full-screen images made a fluid design necessary, so that they could automatically adjust to every screen size without being deformed.

The portfolio pages have a responsive slider with an advanced touch / swipe support built-in to facilitate the navigation from image to image on small devices.

 

THE USER EXPERIENCE

Every image was edited to achieve the perfect lighting in each interior space, and carefully selected so that the internal pages could flow from one to the other keeping a consistent feel across the entire website.

Every image gives a sense of tranquility to make the visitor want to stay longer on the site. Link effects were also eased to reinforce that sense of calm aimed to retain visitors and let them visit the site with no rush.

THE RESULTS

After the new website was launched Collected Interiors experienced an overwhelming success in social media, getting more than 300 Instagram followers in less than 24hrs, or more than 100 Behance followers in less than 24hrs, and many other successful stories. A SEO friendly website along with a link building strategy put this site at the top of the search engine rankings, busting visits and customer enquires.

“Working together was easy and fun. Rosa is an intuitive and highly professional designer, who always figured out how to translate our ideas into a digital experience. ”

— Lisa Ewart, Creative Director of Collected Interiors -

Five simple tips for designer websites

1. Invest in high quality images

Images are the most important piece of marketing for any designer, not just for web design, but also for press, link building strategies, social media marketing and much more. Style your photographs, hire a professional photographer with the right equipment – and experience – to photograph interiors, and edit every image to correct small imperfections and lighting.

2. Keep a simple colour palette

A minimalistic colour palette will achieve an elegant, sleek and modern look in your website. A clean look & feel will let your images speak about your work and the way in which you do business with no distractions.

3. Learn to love the white space

Let the space breathe. Against what many people think, empty space is not a lack of design, it's actually an important design element, essential to achieve a polished and professional look in any website.

4. Apply a visual storytelling to your website

The entire website must tell the visitor your story and every page must conceived as a chapter of that story. The storyline must flow through an intuitive navigation, powerful images and a compelling message. Every aspect of the website design should be carefully and consciously selected to help to support the thread of the story.

5. Create an emotional connection

Design is an emotional business and your prospects will only become clients if they connect emotionally with your brand. The challenge is to create that emotional connection in a few minute visit to your website.

Call to actions will get you newsletter subscribers, blog readers, social media followers, etc, that will stay connected to your business after visiting your website. Use all these platforms to continue working on that emotional connection with them. Many visitors won't get in touch in their first visit but will be ready to work with you after a few interactions with your brand.

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Are you interested in working with me for the design of your brand and website? Visit my Branding and Web Design pages for more information on my process, design package and pricing, and my Contact page to get in touch!

At the end of last year I looked for a simple printer-friendly planner to organised my own work in the New Year. However, everything I found had excessive design elements and colours, being quite distracting. I always thought that good design is as little design as possible so I decided to create my own planner with a clean and simple design.

My first planner was quickly sold out through my Etsy shop in less than a month, so I designed a whole collection of printable planners with a minimalistic, functional and stylish design, and no fuss or distractions. The collection covers three professional planners: a small business marketing planner, a photographer's planner and a blogger's planner.

To this new collection of professional planners launched in January I'm adding now in February a new range of personal planners to help you organise important life events: a wedding planner, a pregnancy and baby planner and a travel planner. These planners have a softer and more delicate design, and still in consistency with Grafika Studio signature style.

So, what's exactly a printable planner for?

My printable planners are organisation tools intended for specific professionals and creative jobs like bloggers, photographers, etc, and cannot be easily found in conventional shops. They contain calendars, checklists and other documents that can help organise your every day professional activities.

What does "printable" mean?

"Printable", in this context, is a digital document, usually a PDF, which is intended to be printed by the final user at home or at a print shop. After printing, they can be punched and organised in ring folders or be bound.

What size are they?

The printable planners have been designed for A4 sizes but can be easily adjusted or re-sized to proportional sizes (like A5 or American sizes like 8.5x11) by any standard printer.

Can a printable be edited?

No, a printable document is not intended to be modified by the final user. However you could edit the document with Adobe Acrobat.

What can I do if I need to edit the document?

If the printable document doesn't exactly suit your specific needs you can request some edits to Grafika Studio. Edits will be charged at a rate of AUD $10 per 20 min. time block.

Can I get the original editable file?

To be able to open and manipulate the original file you need certain design software and family fonts installed in your computer, as well as some design skills. It's usually easier to request changes to Grafika Studio instead of trying to do it by yourself.