work with violetminded Design

work with violetminded design

Philosophy is Awesome. Especially the kind around here.

violetminded Design is built around the precepts of digital elegance – power, simplicity, and beauty in all things. It’s a one-stop-shop solution for a Great Reason, lovelies: I didn’t want you to have to search far and wide for a team to pull together your vision of an online space that fulfills and expands.

Your website is not just a portal for customer or client interaction — it’s where you invite your Perfect People to come in and have a seat on your favourite armchair. Your website is a space for your Perfect People to put their feet up and truly connect with who you are, what you do, and why it matters both to them and to the world.

We’re smack-dab in the centre of an Economic Revolution. Biznez isn’t about hiding – it’s about shining. The New Economy demands meaning behind product and service, instead of the old philosophies of, “Buy this because we say so.” Your clients and customers want to visit a website that’s truly reflective of that biznez and the people that run it. Cookie-cutter designs (and freemium WordPress templates) just don’t grab ‘em like they used to.

When I first started violetminded Design in 2009, I played by the rules of design: header, sidebar, content, footer. Design wasn’t about play-time. It was about finding a solution to a communication-related problem using HTML, CSS, and a good deal of typographic experience.

In 2011, I started to throw all of the rules out the window and began to play with the notion of the Online Space: a culmination of digital footprints that make up an online identity for a biznez and its people.

Social networking completely changed the way we approach our consumers. It’s not about handling consumer issues anymore; it’s about engagement and truly caring for our People. We’re moving away from joyless interactions with consumers. We’re revolving our sentiments — it’s become an online Tribal-driven economy.

I saw my clients struggling to find the relationship between their biz and their social networks and holy sweet mother of muffins, how do I even get started with email marketing? The same questions landed in my inbox over and over again.

“When I think of violetminded, I think of you. And when I think of you, I think of violetminded. You’re an interchangeable brand. How did you DO that?”

(And then someone will ask if I’m a sorcerer or something. I’d give you the answer… but then I’d have to kill you. Mwahahaha.)

Microbusinesses, small business, and personality-driven corporations are all driven by, well, the personalities behind the brand. (Yes, you’re a brand. No, you can’t stop being a brand. Why would you want to be?)

When you think of Rich Happy Hot, you think of Marie Forleo. When you think of Crazy Sexy Life, there’s Kris Carr. And the Fire Starter Sessions? Of course that’s Danielle LaPorte. When you think of violetminded Design, you think of Amanda Farough. (Wait, that’s me!)

These are personality-driven companies whose online spaces are truly reflective of who they are and what they do. Each tweet, Facebook update, newsletter, blog post, and product or service is mindful of their core values and philosophies. Each of these online spaces are the definition of elegant: powerful, simple, and beautiful.

A new conversation has started between you, your online space, and your Perfect People.

How do you want it to go?

The process goes a little somethin’ like this.

“Amanda, how would you describe your design process?”

“Cleverly.”

Okay, that would make a lot more sense if you’d seen Better Off Ted. (FYI, it’s season one, episode ten. On Netflix. Go.)

The violetminded Design process is a combination of intuition, mathematics, psychology, and a generous helping of el-oh-vee-ee. That’s right: love.

I feel like the design process should like partying with Lady Gaga: exhilarating with a dash of reckless abandon and a whole lotta love.

Since Care and Attention are my Superpowers, I make sure that every step of the way is full of laughter, joy, and the odd crude joke. Or expletive. Or both!

Each violetminded Design goes through the same set of milestones, start to finish.

Intake. We introduce ourselves. You tell me a bit (or a lot) about who you are, what you do, why you do it, and why you’re yearning to work with violetminded. We both laugh a lot and come away with a great feeling about working together.

The Design Questionnaire. (You can download that baby right here.) You take great care with your answers to the questionnaire — maybe providing a bit too much information. (I love stories.)

We determine your project requirements. What exactly do you need in addition to web design services and SEO? Copywriting? Social media coaching? Visual identity (logo, business cards, letterhead, etc.)? What are your hard goals for this project? For example: you want to double your subscriber list; you want fifteen more purchases per month in the first three months; or something else. Point is this: you’ve gotta be concrete. Can’t measure it unless it’s measurable.

Ze Quote. I consult with my team, gather their estimates, and then present you with the final costs. There are no surprises here, sweetness – no hidden fees or anything.

The Creative Insight. I do a PILE of research and coupled with the stories you’ve told me in your Design Questionnaire, I determine the visuals for your online space: colour, typography, pattern and texture, and even layout style. And while there’s a little Madness in everything I do, there’s also a good deal of Reason. The Creative Insight will act as the foundation for your online space — it will govern everything from photography to your masthead to badges to your Twitter theme and beyond.

Wireframes. The logical structure of your website gets put together here. We figure out which elements go where. If it doesn’t feel (or look) right, we tweak and tweak until everything makes sense.

Mock-up. A client once asked me: “Amanda, do you always nail it on the first try?” Well, no. Not always. But that Creative Insight sure makes it easy to get pretty damn close! (This is also where we have the initial pass for the copywriting, if you’ve indicated that you need one of the rather amazepants violetminded copywriters.)

Code! We hand off the insanely gorgeous mockup to the violetminded Coder Du Jours (also known as Sarah Lewis) so that she can bring our vision together with her code wizardry. (This is also where you let us know if you’re dreaming of something specific in code so that Sarah can Make it So.)

The Extras. While Sarah’s making everything shiny, we’ll be working together to bring everything together. Twitter, Facebook, newsletter(s), and such get a facelift to make sure that your online space feels elegant from top to bottom. (The copy gets finalized so that we can hand it off to our Logistics Commander to put up on the site as soon as the code is ready.)

Launch. This is the most important step of any violetminded design. As I’ve talked about before, I’m all about the Agile methodology of launching early and tweaking often. We launch with the first code that Sarah sends back to us and tweak until we’re all really happy with the end result. A month after we launch, we take a look at your concrete goals to see if we made ‘em. No progress? We tweak a bit more. (But remember: if you don’t have a solid business plan behind your website, your metrics won’t mean much.)

A small slice of what violetminded has done.

Jenn Suarez - visual identity, web design & development, SEO keyword research
Cash & Joy – visual identity, web design & development
Ronna Detrick – visual identity, web design & development
Gemma Stone & Birthing From Love (under construction) – visual identity, web design, graphic design, SEO keyword research
Evelyn Kalinosky – web design & development
Tanya Geisler – visual identity, web design & development, graphic design
Kelly Diels – visual identity, web design & development
amultitudeofthings – visual identity, web design & development, graphic design