True or False: You need some sort of photography on your site to be successful. Even if it’s stock.
The answer: False. Especially when you’re working with a skilled designer who knows how to incorporate brand colors, gradients, and typography into a website to create a unique style.
Meet the Client
Enter Harford Designs very own go-to website content writer — Kristi Halford, Founder and Chief Supporting Officer of C3 Visionary Strategies. “C3 Visionary Strategies works with emerging businesses, professional services firms, and non-profits to provide revenue-generating marketing and communications strategies to achieve business development, fundraising, and social responsibility goals. “Our work helps organizations to improve talent recruitment and retention, demonstrate impact, drive revenue, and build capacity for small/young teams to be successful.” — c3visionarystrategies.com
The Challenge
As a service provider, Kristi didn’t have hundreds of photographs of work to share. After all, can you really capture a strategy session through a camera? Not really.
What she was able to do, however, was craft through case studies for her successful client projects with statistics and testimonials.
Instead of stock photography, her case studies focus on the client, their brand, their identity.
A peak at C3 Visionary Strategies Girl Scouts of America Case Study.
Even on her Portfolio page, broken down into four categories (accessible via color-designated tabs), we let the work speak for itself. Colorful links are paired with icons to indicate an attached PDF or an external link to another site.
Where appropriate, we took it a step further by embedding YouTube videos and mocking up website campaigns within a computer graphic to ensure viewers were not staring at a boring screenshot.
C3 Visionary Strategies Fundraising Tab on portfolio page.
Branding
Colors
Companies, no matter a one-woman show or growing empire, should always have a branding guide.
C3 not only had every version of their logo on hand, but they also had a style guide to (you guessed it) guide the website.
We wove in color throughout the mostly white webpages, subtly inserting color into icons, buttons, or links. The area with the most color is actually the footer, which incorporates 3 brand colors and white.
C3 Visionary Strategies Logo & Color Palette
Photography
Admittedly, we did utilize stock photography in 2 areas: as a homepage call to action & an attention grabber for case studies. However, the images were set in the background with the bold yellow, orange, and red brand colors taking the main stage. The photos, in this instance, acted more as a subtle background pattern. You didn’t need to see the picture to connect the dots to the content. It simply helped draw the eye to the CTA or link.
Subtle incorporation of stock photography that does not distract from the Calls to Action.
Typography
In a sea of white space and a little color, Fira Sans mixed with Roboto Condensed to create a new visual interest.
Throughout the site, Fira Sans is larger—the true attention grabber. It highlights introductions, client quotes, statistics, and the closing statement in blog articles.
On the rest of the site, you’ll find the font used solely as introduction text.
The Finished Product
This was one of Harford Designs’ favorite website creations to date. It was a wonderful dance of color and typography, which utilized both with restraint.
As Kristi continues to grow her business, she’s been able to update and design her blog herself without needing HTML or CSS. Her site is far from static, and we love checking in on it (and Kristi) to see what amazing work she’s helped her non-profit clients achieve!
Congratulations C3!
Want to see what areas of your website could use some TLC?
Contact us for a site evaluation.
