The Beginning

I have recently decided to take on the challenge of starting my own web design business. It is something I have been wanting to do for a while, but never felt I had a solid foundation of ideas to take the beginning steps. Just a couple weeks ago, I was sitting in a meeting, and what was a completely unrelated topic sparked a flurry of ideas for the basis of my business. One tiny spark turned into a roaring blaze within minutes.

Love By Designs

The company will be called Love By Designs and will cater to newly engaged and married couples. Beautiful websites will be designed to showcase engagement photos and provide all the information for a wedding, and the couples will have a choice to either keep the website running long term as a keepsake, or short term just for the period of time before their wedding date.

The Logo

The logo was originally hand drawn and a series of shapes were tested until the final product was produced. Over the years I have created my own version of cursive and used the style to draw out the main letters. What I found interesting was that the D created a shape that resembled half of a heart. All that needed to be added was the other half!

Mood Board Elements

The website for the company will have a very bright and clean design. I picture it mainly white with pops of color user-friendly elements. It will feel like a breath of fresh air!

Color Palette

Pops of color will be displayed using the Hex values for Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2005, 2009, and 2011, Blue Turquoise, Mimosa, and Honeysuckle, respectively. The inspiration for these colors, oddly enough, came from a Kate Spade wallet I have. Added into this mood board through the logo and typography was this years Pantone’s Color of the Year Marsala. Listed below are the CMYK and RGB equivalent values for these Pantone colors:
Blue Turquoise (2005) C:65, M:8, Y:35, K:0 | R:85, G:180, B:176
Mimosa (2009) C:6, M:24, Y:81, K:0 | R:239, G:192, B:80
Honeysuckle (2011) C:13, M:83, Y:34, K:0 | R:214, G:80, B:118
Marsala (2015) C:10, M:67, Y:49, K:23 | R:173, G:101, B:95

Patterns and Shapes

I am thinking scalloped and chevron patterns will work well together to accent certain features of the website. They elegant and unique patters that tie in the wedding theme. I also plan on using circles and rounded corners to balance the straight lines present throughout the site.

Design Process

Before even beginning the design, I spent time collecting the images and color information I needed from different resources. High resolution photos were gathered from Pixabay and color formulas were obtained from a blog called Elite Email. Once that was complete, I began with laying out the color blocks. I wanted this to be the first element on the page so I could make sure the colors were correctly formulated without distraction. I then designed the remainder of my mood board around these components. Each photo was carefully sized and placed using the ruler tool in Photoshop. I wanted every element evenly spaced. This process, even though a bit tedious, completely encompasses the idea of a clean design. The images with the two couples were beautiful in raw form, but I decided to add a Photoshop action that would boost the quality and add a slightly warmer tone. This action is called Vanilla Pop and was created by Paint the Moon.

Final Thoughts

I am extremely excited to use this as my inspiration for the business I will be starting. I feel it will really help to keep me on track while I design the website for Love By Designs. The feelings I get when I look at this mood board are the same feelings I hope to provoke in potential and current clients when visiting the business website.