CraftStory (Sydney) Gets Branding Revamp and Website

CraftStory is a studio run by a passionate artist based in Sydney, Australia. She reached out to take their work online. Our initial discussion gave me a clear direction: their requirement was to build their identity online, which included a WordPress-powered website, social media strategy, and branding support.

Being an artist herself, she knows exactly what she wants — my role was simply to refine her vision and bring it to life, aligning it with UX trends of 2020.

Objective:

The journey began by understanding CraftStory’s unique identity and the artist’s vision… Talking with the founder to uncover her brand story, creative style and long-term goals. Competitor analysis gave a better picture of the industry and her expectation to stand out.

• Create a logo that captures the artistic essence of CraftStory — crafting, training, and adaptable to both print and digital.
• Design/develop a WordPress-powered website that showcases her artworks and services in home page with seamless navigation. Mobile device support is also on cards.

Ideate & Design:

Sketched concepts inspired by colourful paper crafting and typography to put a professional touch to it. I initially created few logos in Adobe Illustrator for the client to review and share feedback. Based on the feedback, final draft of four logo were made, they followed an identical colour palette to keep the discussion simple and focused around the aesthetics and typography. And this worked, the client was happy with coloured rendering and she could make her mind in just one go.

Web Design comes next… Wireframe for few selected pages are done like the “Home”, “About Us”, “Service”, “Contact Us” and the client’s feedback were captured to iterate. Final mockups were created in Adobe Photoshop implementing the feedback and shared with client for one final review discussion. Mobile, tablet and desktop versions were created with a grid (4 columns for mobile, 6 columns for tablet and 12 columns for desktop) approach for easier implementation.

The home page gets a sleek hero section with “Creative Kids” logo siting on it, which is one of the clients ask. The alignment varies between mobile and bigger screened device. Featured section follows the hero, this section shows three block, then its just a footer that carries contact information of the studio. The header is small, follows a generic “logo” left and “navigation” right type layout, this is also fixed making it accessible even the page is scrolled down.

The rest of the pages follows the same hero layout and footer, the body section is designed in such a way the contact details is displayed to the right. The main content is on the left taking 9 columns of space and the contact detail on a coloured background stands out bit making the conversion better.

Test:

• Tested logo legibility at different scales and on various backgrounds.
• Conducted quick usability checks on the website prototype, focusing on navigation clarity and readability.
• Conducted quick usability tests with a small group to check information flow and accessibility.
• Gathered feedback on visual hierarchy and tweaked typography, spacing and button placements based on input.

WordPress Implementation:

From the start, this website was designed on WordPress CMS, so I put on my developer coat and started coded this using my local WordPress installation. The version that used is “WordPress 5.4.2” and PHP 7.1.1 along with a base theme called “underscores.me“. This being a custom theme, it was developed with a mobile first approach, following all the industry standards to date.

The home page is a custom page template, with embedded loop to pickup the latest post posted via WordPress Admin panel, so that all of the content can be update at any time by the client herself without the need for a developer of designer intervention. This theme also uses a plugin called “WPForms Lite”, which is used for the contact us form.

Launch & Post Release Evaluation:

As this is a WordPress implementation, the hosting and WordPress CMS installation also was done by me, with some support from her domain owner GoDaddy. The site went live on mid July 2020 (www.craftstory.com.au). A maintenance of 60 days was also given by me but the content and visuals are procured by the client herself. I gave her some information on where she can find images that is royalty free, which help her stay legal.

Our post release maintenance includes performance tweaking, accessibility check and in-house SEO and and all of these came out good. Though the performance score was below the expectations but this is mostly due to visuals and size of images. I gave a training session to the author and the artist on how to properly use the CMS, then these numbers are expected to get better. But clients priority shifted to social network markets, so not much moved in terms of performance but we got the SEO and best practice to the acceptable level, which the client is happy.

This is where I dropped off from this short yet exciting engagement and the client started building her own pages using the WordPress CMS.