Misa needed a brand built from the ground up to help them set themselves apart in a competitive industry while staying true to their story.
Co-founders and cousins Jenny and Stacey had a new, budding (no pun intended) floral design business, mostly acquiring customers through word of mouth and friends of friends (of friends). They were ready to expand and needed a way to reach a wider audience and gain more customers. So they approached me to help them build their brand and grow their business through design.
The beginning of every project (and probably the most important part) is me putting on my lab coat, grabbing my stethoscope and helping my clients get to the root of their problems. What problems are they having that lead them to believe they need a logo and website? What are their short and long term business goals? How will we measure success for this project? My job in this step of the branding process is to ask the right questions and to listen. Sometimes this conversation leads to the conclusion that what my clients thought they needed was actually not what they needed after all to solve their problems.
At the end of our meeting we concluded that what Misa needed was a brand platform on which to build their business. They needed an identity and a way to reach their customers in a consistent, cohesive way.
We began the visual process by putting together stylescapes to nail down a visual direction for their brand. We came up with two very different directions (I called one trendy and the other elegant) to be sure we understood (and that they did too) what their vision was.s.
Professional photography is one of the most important aspects of good web design and I always ecourage my clients to invest in it. Often times it makes or breaks a great website.
We focused on two aspects of R&G Lounge for the photoshoot - the food and the space. To match the visual direction of modern and elegant, we chose to do a simplistic approach with minimal background noise for the food and wide angles to capture the expanse of R&G’s dining areas.
The food is captured mainly in closeup shots to make visitors hungry! We chose R&G’s most popular dishes so that customers will immediately recognize and connect with the experience. For the dining spaces we wanted to display the many options for private dining - one of the main offerings at R&G. It was important to show the different angles for the various rooms to show potential parties the many options at their disposal.
The goal throughout the entire process was to focus on the food. From the messaging to the final designs, R&G’s eclectic yet authentic dishes were front and center. We also wanted to be sure their brand was carried out through their website to give their customers a consistent experience. Little touches from the restaurant space were included on various pages to fullfill that. Consistency is key to every brand and we were able to achieve that through this touchpoint.
During the site development phase I made sure the site looked good on all devices (laptop, tablet, mobile phone, etc) and included an optional training session to educate R&G on how to update their site using Webflow’s very easy website editor. I also handled all of the techincal side of things like DNS entries, domain transfers and hosting. I set up their analytics to be able to track user behaviors, origins and any metric goals they had.
After much exploration and many rounds of iterations we landed on a version of a cherry blossom for the logomark and a version of FH Ampersand for the logotype. The cherry blossom, Japan’s national flower and cultural icon, was a perfect flower to represent the Misa brand as it reflects their familial background and its five petals, each reflect Misa’s five brand attributes.FH Ampersand was used because of its elegance, balancing a semi-serif nature without having strokes. We wanted to communicate a delicate nature of flowers while maintaining an approachability.
Masanita is Misa’s lead display typeface. It’s rounded strokes create a friendly and fun vibe that still feels sincere and professional. Sohne is Misa’s workhorse typeface. It’s readability and simplicity allows it to handle its purpose of communicating information.
Masanita is Misa’s lead display typeface. It’s rounded strokes create a friendly and fun vibe that still feels sincere and professional. Sohne is Misa’s workhorse typeface. It’s readability and simplicity allows it to handle its purpose of communicating information.
Websites are one of the most important touchpoints of your brand. And often times it’s the first interaction potential customers have with your business. Thus it’s crucial that it perpetuates your brand’s story and messaging and creates a pleasant and delightful user experience.
Building a website is a multi-step process. In the Discovery stage of the entire project we talk about website goals and success measurements. When moving to design we first must nail down the structure of the pages themselves. High fidelity wireframes allow us to quickly establish and focus on the ‘skeleton’ of the pages without the distraction of visuals (images, colors, etc).
Once the structure of each page (along with the entire site architecture) has been worked out we can move to the visuals. For this I referred to Misa’s brand attributes and stylescapes to guide me.
