Behind the Scenes: Building Our Own Website, and What It Taught Us About Web Design

Designers are often the last to get their own website. This year we built ours. Here is a look behind the scenes at how we approach web design at Vega Creative Studio, Rajkot, using our own home page as the example.

Web design starts with the order of the story

A home page is a short conversation. We decided the order first and designed after:

1. Hero. Who we are, in one look.

2. What we do. Our six services, easy to scan.

3. Proof. The Guinness World Record achievement, with the certificate.

4. Trust. The logos of the clients we have worked with.

5. Voices. What clients say about us.

6. Next step. A clear contact section and footer.

The logos sit directly above the testimonials on purpose. First the visitor sees who we work with, then hears from them.

What happens behind the scenes

1. We write the content before the layout. Headlines, numbers and captions come first. A design built around real text always beats one built around placeholders.

2. We build in sections. Each section is designed on its own, so it can be edited or reordered without breaking the rest of the page.

3. We keep the brand tight. Two typefaces, four brand colours and a small animated line of those four colours as a signature.

4. We design for the phone as well as the desktop. Many visitors arrive on a phone, so every section is checked at phone width.

5. We make it easy for the owner to edit. Logos, photos and text sit in simple lists, so the team can change them without a developer.

A small problem: eleven logos, eleven shapes

Our client logos arrived in every size and shape. Some were tall, some wide, some on white backgrounds and one on grey. Forcing them into identical squares made the small ones look lost and the wide ones look squeezed.

So we changed the rule. We removed the background from each logo, trimmed the empty space, and let each box take the shape of its logo. Wide logos get wide boxes. Tall logos get tall boxes. Each one can be enlarged or reduced with a single number. The wall now looks natural, not forced. We also put the whole section on a calm grey from our brand palette, so no logo gets lost against a dark background.

And then the address

A website is not finished when the design is. We connected our own domain, vegacreativestudio.com, to the site and updated every link on every page, so visitors, search engines and our Google profile all point to one address.

Lessons we carry into every website

• Decide the story first. Order is design.

• Let content set the layout. Not the other way around.

• Make it flexible. Real client material is never uniform.

• Finish the details. Domain, links, mobile view and speed.

Planning a website?

We design it, build it and hand it over so your team can keep it fresh. Talk to Vega Creative Studio.