As I mentioned last week, I am working on branding for my special projects assignment. I love branding and marketing, so I am very excited about this project. I have chosen to create a look and feel, brand, and WordPress site for a naturopathic doctor. He has written a book, which is in the editing stage now, but the client would like a book design and e-book in due course.
We signed the contract last week and I had my second client meeting last Friday. I realized last week after talking to Marc that I need to work on bringing more energy and confidence to these meetings. I basically need to learn to sell the client on my abilities as a designer, as they have hired me with zero prior knowledge of my skill set, and have some legitimate concerns about my abilities.
We made some good progress on what we like & don’t like about the initial style tile. This gave me a good insight on what the client is looking for from a style perspective and made me feel a lot better. The client is open to other typeface treatments for the logo and I will choose several for him to choose from. He has indicated that a non-typographic logo may not be necessary, but we may revisit this later. We agreed that the length of the title creates challenges from a design perspective, and discussed focusing on “GHF” for the logo instead.
This week, my deliverables will be to provide the client with some alternate typeface treatments for the logo. We discussed the wire frames and I explained some content strategy techniques, specifically, how to use blogging and guest blogs to keep the site active, and designing from the “content out”. Thankfully, we agree on all the suggestions I made, so I feel ready to get started on the site map and wireframing in the coming week.
I am taking an agile approach to this project, but am on target with the established timeline:
Sept 23 – 28 – Establishing / Pitching project idea
Sept 29 – Oct 5 – Establishing look and feel – brainstorming – color palette & style tile
Oct 6 – 12 – Logo development & Typography treatment
Oct 13 – 19 – Finalizing Logo and overall look and feel
Oct 20 – 26 – Sitemap & initial sketches (some existing wireframes already prepared by client)
Oct 27 – Nov 2 – Begin developing wireframes
Nov 3 – 9 – Finalize wireframes
Nov 10 – 16 – Begin uploading content to existing WordPress theme
Nov 17 – 23 – WordPress
Nov 24 – 30 – WordPress
Dec 1 – 7 – WordPress
Dec 8 – 14 – Finalize WordPress site
Leanne Padgett 