The Sun Kitchen - Follow Along Design Project

T

Tony Hardy

Guest
Hi everyone,
I'm going to test out a new idea on the forum and wondered if you'd indulge me or be interested in it at all?
The idea is this "a follow along web design project". I wish I could see how others work a lot of the time, see how things are achieved etc. So that's the idea. To give people an insight into my working progress and see if anyone wants to comment on it and things along the way.
So, without further ado, here's the "brief" and what's happened so far.
"I really need to improve my web design skills. I want to create a site from scratch rather than relying on Wordpress themes and templates. So, with that in mind, I've volunteered to create a site for my partner's mam's café. The café is in Rothbury in the North East of England and it's called The Sun Kitchen. The cafe is famous for it's coffee, cakes and baked goods."
What's happened here so far is that basically, I've opened up and saved out the 960gs Photoshop template with a white background. I've also began pinning a lot of research and inspiration to a specially made board on Pinterest. This helps keep me thoughts together and collated in one place that I can access from anywhere. I've also created two projects. One containing the Responsive Bootstrap from http://www.initializr.com, the other is going to contain the PSDs and Photoshop artwork.
I'm beginning to sketch a few ideas and things down too, I'll try and get them photographed when I have a moment.
Anyway yeah, let me know your thoughts and ideas. Fire any questions at me when you have them and we'll see how this goes!
 

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Last night I realised that if I was making the website for this company, it definitely needed some halfway decent branding to go alongside it. That way, I've got a really good rounded portfolio piece of work that I want to be doing for my portfolio too.
With that in mind, I began messing around with sketches concepts and this is where I got to so far. A palette, a couple of marks and some text.

The sub-text isn't serious, just need to think of something to go there. Somebody suggested "Moaty went crazy for our cakes" but yeah, I don't think that one will push the brand in the right light ;)
The thinking behind the red was; iconic British things are red and the café are "quintessentially British". So red lent itself well to the concept. Red bus, the red phone box, cooking, passion and heart.
 

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Good work here Tony and an interesting idea for the forums - shame you haven't had more feedback! Any of you new to design, this would be a great opportunity to ask questions on the processes involved with such work. Or for those of you who already know, it might be interesting to compare your processes!
Frequently people might ask you to make them a website, but I know from experience that a lot of the time they usually have a horrible logo/branding to go with their horrible website. How would you approach this situation? Would/do you try to get them to pay you for logo design as well and what sort of 'convincing' techniques would you employ to see the desired outcome?
 
Great thread, cheers Tony! Just started learning to use HTML and CSS with a view to hopefully making it a full-time job one day, so this is perfect. "Rise and shine"? -__-
 
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