This project began with an initial discovery about the services provided by the client, followed by our creative branding and logo design process for Contour Audio & Acoustics. The web design & development portion of the project started quickly once the branding and logo design portion of the project was completed. This process helped to create a seamless and consistent brand experience with new and refreshed marketing materials across the board for the client.
Branding & Logo Design
Branding & logo design is the ideal starting place for new startups and small businesses, and helps set the creative and marketing materials in the best possible direction from the first day the business opens. For the branding & logo design phase of this project, we explored a number of creative styles, icons, font treatments, colors, and layouts for the client to review. After the initial creative review, there was a clear design “winner”. This logo design featured an isometric design style, san-serif font, and simple color palette.
For the logo icon, we used geometric design elements to create 3d acoustic panels that are central to the business services. This approach creates a simple and elegant icon design that is memorable, classic, and directly tied to the business services. It also presents extremely well when the design uses an inverted color scheme, is oriented horizontally, vertically, in letterpress or foil print applications, or with just the iconography alone.
The font choice follows the geometric elements with an all-caps treatment of the business name, in both light and bold font weights. This logo design also features adjusted kerning of the letters. This allows for a block-style alignment of the business name while keeping everything readable at even the smallest of sizes and formats across the web and print media.
Logo Design File Formats & Delivery
For all logo design and branding projects we take on, once the logo design is revised, finalized, and approved, we go through a design process to export and save every possible format. This includes sizes for web and print usage, and delivery to the client as a single package. We also include all source design files in Adobe Illustrator format. This gives the client complete control of the artwork should they ever need these in the future. Bottom line: we hand off all the design assets, raster formats, vector formats, and iconography to our clients at the completion of our logo design projects.
This approach means our clients have EVERYTHING they could possibly need to create marketing collateral, update websites, printed materials, merchandise, t-shirts, schwag, or anything they can come up with for their new logo design and brand materials. This includes screen printing, embroidery, etching, and large format vehicle wraps and other applications.
Web Design & Development
The web design & development phase of this project followed quickly after the branding and logo design phase was completed, and was designed and built out on the WordPress platform as a fully-custom Content Management System (CMS). Fonts, colors, and overall design style we carried through from the branding and logo design into the web design and development phase of the project, with the addition of custom photography provided by the client.
While the entire website and mobile experience is now managed by the client, special attention was given to allow the client to have control over global elements of the template, contact forms, and addition of their own client logos to make their website management and content changes/additions as easy as possible over time. This includes a front-end visual builder experience installed over the WordPress platform, and custom fields, global template elements, and custom modules that the client only needs to populate with content.
Mobile Experience & Usability
A vast number of site visitors come from users on mobile devices and tablets, which makes the mobile experience and website responsiveness paramount when implementing new websites for new businesses and startups. For this reason, extra care is given to the web development with a mobile-first approach. Site menus, navigation, and functionality all adapt and respond to mobile devices without the client needing to worry about “breaking” the layout or site when they add content and make changes.
Mobile users also tend to have different needs and goals on a website desktop visitors, so we have elevated items like phone number, contact info, and location information so that mobile visitors get the information they need as quickly as possible.
Site Speed & Optimization
Websites need to do more than just look nice. They need to load quickly and ultimately convert visitors into customers. On-site page speed optimization is another key service we offer to our clients, which includes looking at image optimization, scripts loading into pages, script compression, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), site caching, and script minification among other techniques. This is critical to insure that websites load quickly and efficiently, which impacts search visibility with Google and other search engines, as well as the visitor experience on the site.
Using reporting tools like Google Developer Pagespeed, GTMetrix, and Pingdom, we are able to test and optimize load times for our clients so that their sites load as quickly and efficiently as possible.