Case Study: Designing Emily Bazalgette’s Brand and Website
I worked with Emily at the start of 2021 to brand her consulting and coaching business and build her a Squarespace website. Before deciding to work with a designer, Emily had freelanced for four years and had a one page Squarespace website but she didn’t have a visual identity.
I met Emily through Twitter, after a friend retweeted this tweet:
I felt like Emily was describing me, which is extremely unusual because not often people are proactively looking to work with someone with a chronic illness. We quickly discovered we both suffered from ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, had an initial Zoom chat and I’d like to think we hit it off!
Emily’s initial brief was to create a logo and brand guidelines that included fonts and colours, as well as a Squarespace website. She wanted a visual identity that was recognisable across multiple platforms including her website, social media, Google Slides and Docs and Substack newsletter. She also wanted something she could iterate and build upon as her business grew.
Design influences
Her branding needed to be professional but still personable, as her services are so individualised and also hint at her different services/offerings. Therefore, I was keen to make sure the branding reflected Emily’s personality and her taste because her business is so much about her; people choose to work with Emily and not a corporate organisation. I knew I needed to create something she really loved because if she was passionate about it, it would show in her interactions with potential clients.
At first we talked about colours, shapes and textures she was drawn to and collaborated on a Pinterest board. Emily was keen for her brand to reflect her love of nature and also have a mid century and retro influence.
Round One
I started off by creating a moodboard that encapsulated her love of organic shapes, textures and colours inspired by nature and mid century but was more focussed than the Pinterest boards.
Emily and I had initially discussed either using a forest green or a navy as the darkest shade but I felt both added depth to the colour palette and the forest green created a friendly feeling that wasn’t achieved by only the navy.
Emily was clear she favoured typography based logos so my initial explorations tried to find an approachable and rounded typeface. She didn’t want an icon as a mark and I felt a monogram was a good solution; it was still type based but was more elevated than simply writing her name in a typeface.
Emily was keen for her branding to include organic shapes; I took my preferred typeface and manipulated the counter spaces and tittle.
I then started to pull everything together.
Round two
Even though Emily thought round one was exactly on-brief, she felt the designs were too nature based so I revisited the moodboard and colour palettes. Emily wanted something much more vibrant, urban and modern rather than dated, so I added an intense pop of lime and hot pink.
We felt her name looked too harsh in a bold sans serif typeface so I tried to create something softer and lighter using a serif typeface instead. We wanted to focus more on the ‘g’, ‘z’, ‘y’ and double ‘tt’ because they’re quite an unusual combination!
I reintroduced the new colour palette and came up with a selection of logo ideas where Emily’s name was written over two lines, as that felt the most balanced. I also further explored the circular design because Emily was a fan of this from the first round.
Round three
Emily felt round two was too modern; she didn’t like the lime and the pink reminded her of a recruitment agency. Instead we decided to look at softer tones, used the stone colour as a background and introduced shades of mustard and mint. She really wanted the branding to produce a warm and sunshine feeling, which was lacking in the previous round, as well as be feminine without being in your face.
I decided the monogram wasn’t working and made the bold decision to ditch it. I liked the simplicity of a logo from the previous round, so I kept this in mind when I explored typefaces again. I was looking for a serif but something that had a lot of character, as well as a friendly and approachable vibe.
I was keen to explore Emily’s name written in different weights because I think that really did emphasise her multi-disciplined business. As soon as I combined ‘Emily Bazalgette’ in two different weights and in a regular and italic font, I knew this was the best representation of Emily.
I then began to think about introducing colours and shapes.
Final design
We were getting closer and closer to the final design and the main sticking point was the colour palette, so I created some new options and added them to the logo.
Unexpectedly, we reintroduced the lime from the first round and it added the vibrancy we had been lacking.
After settling on Didonesque for the logo, I wanted to find another font that had similar width and x-height. Emily was keen we chose something that was available on Google Fonts so she had access to it in Google Docs and Slides.
Brand Guidelines
I don’t believe in designing pages and pages of brand guidelines and coming up with silly ways of how not to display the logo, therefore I like to try and keep things simple and give only the key pieces of important.
Website
Emily was a great client and had written a first draft of the content before I started working on the wireframes. This helped me immensely when I was designing the wires.
I really had fun with Emily’s homepage design; it was enjoyable to work the shapes and texture into the layout and create a strong sense of individuality that was still quite professional!
We made a few changes before the final site in Squarespace; unfortunately Substack didn’t allow for any customisation of their sign up form but hopefully they will in the future.
As always I design with accessibility in mind and there’s a nice touch on the website where the aubergine changes to a darker shade on mobiles so it passes accessibility rules when the font is smaller.
You can visit Emily’s website at https://emrosebaz.com
Final thoughts
I really enjoyed working with Emily and I’m very proud to have her work in my portfolio. It felt like a true collaboration and I think we definitely achieved something that was unique to her business and personality and still very professional.
I personally learnt a lot from Emily and I really respected her openness in terms of her health. From the beginning, she set out her expectations and let me know which hours she was most productive in and gave me the space to do the same. I think our honesty really did drive our success, especially considering we were doing this work during pandemic lockdowns. I also found my process of recording videos when I share work proved really useful for us both; I definitely found it easier to talk than write an email and it worked for Emily because she could watch the videos when she was feeling her best. I look forward to taking what I learnt from Emily into future projects.
Work with me!
My portfolio is over at Dribbble http://katherinecory.com where you can see more of my work. If you’d like to see what story I can create for your brand and/or web project and think I’d be a good fit for your business, please get in touch by emailing me at hello@katherinecory.com.
Thanks!
