New website for Creative Calligraphy

My new-look website is now live and I’m sure you’ll love it as much as I do.

It’s the culmination of a lot of work around my branding, involving many people who have shared their expertise in a number of ways – and they’re all small businesses owners like me.

I’ll not bore you with the technical details, but the theme on which my website was built was a little outdated and there wasn’t much scope to change things around.

So I called upon Jackie Latham, from Jackdaw Web Design, to give it a refresh.       

User-friendly and on-brand 

It’s now much more user friendly, with easier to read text (always good when it comes to my blogs) and appealing images, for which I have Gavin Forster Photography and Corrina Atkinson Photography to thank.

The colours also match my branding, which is something I didn’t really consider when I first started out, beyond having a logo done, business cards designed and flyers printed.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate that branding is much more than that.

I’ve been working with Hollie Ellis, from Hollie Ellis Design, for some time now to develop and improve my business image and make sure everything ties in nicely together.

Our relationship began with a redesign of my business cards to feature images of my work, which were then printed on much more tactile card stock.

I still receive compliments from everyone I hand them out to!

Hollie has since created other branded stationery for me, so when she offered me a brand review, I jumped at the opportunity for a one-to-one chat with her about the specific needs of my business, from social media to styling my photography.

Hollie also got me thinking a lot more about packaging, from how I present finished commissions to clients, to the materials I put together for workshops.

This certainly appealed to my love of stationery and I now have envelopes in brand colours, stickers with my logo on and paper-based gifts to give to clients and workshop participants, supplied by another local business, The Paper Garden.

Collaborating with experts

My website redesign was also inspired by a chat with Helena Borthwick-Hill, from 49 Digital, who carried out a user experience review of my site and made a number of suggestions, every single one of which I took on board. She knows her stuff!

And then there’s the lovely Michelle Nicol, from Wordstruck, who helped with the content side of things, even letting me borrow a quote from a blog she wrote about calligraphy, as I simply couldn’t have put it better myself!

Jackie worked really hard on the site over the summer to make sure it was ready for re-launch ahead of a busy autumn season for me, with several workshops and a wedding fair all coming up, as well as more blogs, so there’s always something new on the site.

I’d love to know what you think of the new look. Please leave your comments (and any suggestions) at the bottom of this post.