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Some Recent LEAP Work

By August 16, 2011design

I can’t believe I forgot to show you this work we just did. For two amazing Catherines and two amazing websites.

First up: Closet of Style.

Catherine Horgan came to us in desperate need of a new logo and a new website. What a treat it is to work with a client as stylish and savvy as Catherine — we loved the challenge of creating for her.

For the logo, Catherine wanted something clever, colorful, and sophisticated. The mark we came up with makes a ligature out of the C and the S. They’re conjoined in a way that suggests that perhaps the S is hanging in the C. (You know — like in a closet.) It’s playful and clever, but also sophisticated. It feels like so many fashion logos, yet doesn’t resemble any one in particular. Wouldn’t that mark make a great silver key fob? I know, right?

 

 

With the website, Catherine wanted something that she’d never seen before. No small order. What we created has many references — tear sheets on a work table, layers of clothes, swatches of cloth — but feels like a new thing. A design that was made just for Catherine and no-one else. We also had gorgeous photography to work with — from Ellen Yale. It was important to showcase that in a way that made you stop and look at it. Also, the photos are super clever. Catherine is a problem solver, and these photos do a fantastic job of showing that off.

Most of all, it’s a site that achieves a tough goal — there’s a lot going on, but it doesn’t feel too busy. We’re so happy with how it all turned out and we hope to get to work with Catherine forever and ever.

On that note, if you’re looking for a personal stylist, someone to help you figure out what you should be wearing, or just a great fashion blog to add to your daily reads, you really need to check out Closet of Style.

You’re welcome.


Next up is Her Bad Mother. Catherine Conners came to us not knowing exactly what she wanted, but knowing she needed something. Once upon a time she “just” wrote a blog. (Get it? Just? Like that’s some easy tiny task?) But now she is writing about all sorts of weighty issues that needed their own space to grow and thrive. Yet it needed to still be readable and easy to navigate. We had to make sure the gorgeous writing on the site didn’t get buried in the design.

We decided to give the site lots of clean, white space to make sure it was easy to find your way around. With one, big, featured post a day. And cool accordion-like content areas just under the featured post. We also ended up shrinking the height of her header a good bit to give more “above the fold” goodness. But we made darn sure not to take away the fantastic (and iconic) surprised baby. The green and blue serve to punch things up a little. With a “lots of white space” site, it doesn’t take much to breathe some life into things. Subtle use of bright colors worked well for this site, adding to the clean, crisp feel and giving you some points of reference as you move around the pages.

All-in-all, we’re thrilled with how the site turned out, and we loved working with Catherine who provided us with such great work to design around. If you want to read some amazing writing, be sure to visit Her Bad Mother. But be warned — hours will pass like minutes and you’ll look up after breakfast to find that it is now dark outside and where did the day go?

As always, we’re so lucky to have such great clients who let us do fun work. Do you need a logo or a site redesign? Get in touch – we’d love to talk to you!

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