A Fresh Website for Your Fresh Linens
Posted by Matt on October 21, 2009
Linens of the Week came to us looking for a clean and up-to-date design for their website. In addition, they were seeking enhanced functionality to allow customer access to invoices and orders.
We sent over two design variations, making sure to reuse their currently branded blue whenever possible. Their feedback follows…
“Can I see this with a completely different color scheme?”
Hearing this might make a designer cringe, but it’s very important to make sure the client is happy. Fortunately, the project was still in the early stages, so alterations were relatively easy to make.
After a brief consultation, we agreed to work on some new variations while keeping within the same basic palette. This would mean shifting the use of color around while adding shades and tints to create more variety. This type of consultation helps keep everyone happy by taking the middle ground. We aren’t creating designs with wildly conflicting colors, and the client doesn’t have to hear a flat out refusal on our end.
We submitted the above mockups, two of which rotated color usage in sections like the highlight column (bottom right corner), and one of which used a monochromatic scheme (third mockup from the left).
When only one color is used for a design, the overall feel can often be flat or what I’d consider “overly emotional”. A design that only uses red can make you feel too hectic or heated without a cool compliment for balance. Similarly, a design that only uses blue would make you feel too serious or cold without warm oranges or reds. When it came time to show our client the revisions, we made sure to bring this up as a possible issue.
In the end, they went with the primarily orange/gold design, giving the site a bright and light feeling while still leaving room to use the complimenting blue for their logo and headings.
