Design thinking

When I started in digital design professionally I found it was very familiar to the design work I’d done before with physical objects.

research to understand the context and user
consider limitations and limiting variables
ideate innovative solutions
evaluate your options
apply this thinking to the product
test product against research findings

This familiarity allowed me to apply my years of experience, giving me confidence in my approach. In principal, all design is the same regardless of the application. While my process and approach are the same, the simplicity of that thought is naïve. Technical knowledge within a field as well as understanding the context of that knowledge plays a big role.

DIGITAL STRATEGY

The Tool

Websites should deliver a need to the right person at the right time. As audiences and businesses are intricate, this is rarely a simple task. Websites are tools that should work for you.

When I approach building a website, I am designing a tool to perform the jobs to be done. A website is a powerful marketing and sales tool, but is a single functional part of a business’s marketing and operations plan.

Client Needs

This stage is about uncovering the story
Clients have clear goals for their website that they are aware of, and there are often some goals they aren’t aware of
Interviews are powerful tools to understanding my clients needs, pain points and desires

Strategy & Collaborative Solutions

After developing an understanding for:

clients’ top needs
functional priorities and jobs to be done
how their website will dovetail into their marketing goals
their capacity to maintain and update the tool

Through consultation and collaboration I can hash out a real understanding for the context that surrounds the website. I can proceed armed with information to make choices like what platform will serve my client and how.

Architecture & Organization

A business has so many facets to it. The organization of what to feature, where, and how is a wildly important part of the design.

For complicated multi-stakeholder business situations, there are often many different audiences to consider. Designing a site map that uses multi-level navigation and surfaces information from high to low priority is a careful task.

Users have short attention spans, poorly organized content will drop site visitors.

Style & Brand

At a glance, a website’s visual design takes all the credit for the quality of a website. The truth is, the site should work so seamlessly that users can simply enjoy the visual design.

Very often my clients have an existing brand that I work with or modify. I consistently take a minimal and subtle approach to visual design. Simple text styles, few colours and white space offer a lot of integrity to beautiful imagery and graphics.

Indie Designer

As an independent, my work and skillset is broad. Throughout each project, I embark on a variety of disciplines to achieve high quality results for clients.

I now offer services and consultation in a variety of areas including:

Graphic design, video editing, content strategy and creation, writing and copy editing, SEO best practice, e-commerce setup and management, multi-platform integration, domain customization, analytics analysis, digital ads accounts, ads campaign creation and management, marketing plan consultation.