BrittanyMakes

The rebrand and redesign of the new shop & blog definitely didn’t happen overnight. If you think about it, I’ve spent all my years of blogging (5!) cultivating this aesthetic and “brand” that reflects my style. Even before starting this rebrand/redesign process, I didn’t have it quite ‘figured out’. I was carrying years of published posts and tried-and-failed design choices on my shoulders, sometimes it’s just not as clear to oneself as it should be, and I was beyond ready to enlist a professional to help harness what it looks like today to be me.

I thought it would be fun to take you a little behind the scenes of the process we went through to create this new site.

The first thing Jane instructed me to do was to create a Pinterest board and pin all things (images, product, spaces, etc) that I felt represented my style and brand.

It was simultaneously easy, fun, and overwhelming. What I noticed is, there’s a fine line between what you think your style is, vs what others see your style as. It was a good thing the second instruction was to ‘pare down’, and delete pins that didn’t actually fit. Seeing all these pins and inspo on one plane definitely helped to identify the items that didn’t belong.

Jane then digested the visual information and presented a mood board, color palette, and font suggestions. I was prepared for multiple revisions, but she is a mastermind and completely nailed it on the first go.

What I appreciated most is how Jane was able to carry forward items from the old site (like the title font, or a room in my own home) and showcase them in a brand new light. It’s this skill that makes her a professional and absolutely worth hiring.

The combination or pairing of fonts you choose for your site is so crucial, it’s essentially the framework of your site’s visual identity. Even the size of your fonts have significant impact. A body font too large, for example, creates a less pleasant reading experience. We had to tweak the size of our body font at the last stages of launch because it felt slightly off.

The next step was logos! Jane provided a bunch of logo options. She came up with the zig-zag design as the main logo identifier for the shop and blog. We agreed this design felt like it was a pattern you might find on a rug or textile, and even invoked the feeling of being ‘woven’. It was so perfect, and I definitely wanted it as part of the logo itself. That said, it was easy to narrow down the logo options, and we finalized on these:

We loved the idea of a stamped logo, something that gave off the feeling of ‘traveled’, ‘collected’, ‘worldly’, almost like a travel stamp in someone’s passport. This would be an accent logo, and the stacked woven logo would be the main logo, which you can see on the site today!

The next phase was designing the pages of the website, which I’m sure you’re already familiar with now that the site has been up for a week! Every page on the site has new and exciting elements. I was most excited about both the blog and shop officially becoming one. I was also thrilled to finally have a full about page, services page, and portfolio showcasing my favorite projects.

It was important to me to prevent readers from thinking the brittanyMakes blog disappeared – a fear of any individual combining two sites into one. Alchemy + Aim (the developing team) made sure we didn’t lose any SEO, that all pages redirected seamlessly. It’s knowledge and skill like this that proved hiring a professional is absolutely worth it.

If you haven’t taken a moment to poke around a bit on the new site yet, please do! I hope you love it as much as I do.

A million thanks to Jane and Alchemy + Aim for making this site what it is today, and to Blair for her incredible copy skills. Without Blair’s hand this site would be empty of verbal flair.