Martian Pets: New Business Design
A new responsive, informational website for commission pet portraits by an independent artist.
What's in Store
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Project Overview
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Project Kickoff
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Discovery
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Define
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Develop
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Deliver
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Launch
Project Overview
What's the Need?
Artist Amy Martin needs a digital presence for gallery and commission inquiries for her brand new pet portrait business.
How Can I Help?
Have a project kickoff meeting with the client about their commissions, styles, how they see the business growing over the next couple years.
Conduct competitive analysis of existing competitors in the commission art field, specifically for pet portraits.
Create sitemap, primary user flow, and wireframes for MVP of website for first launch.
Design branding through mood boards and style tiles for website, and develop website on client-accessible CMS.
Getting Started
Project Kickoff
To start, we wanted to have a mutual and aligned understand of the artistic style of the commissions being offered to customers.
Essentially, we brainstormed the why behind the website.
The workshop focused on 4 major questions about business goals
1
What do we want to offer to our customers?
2
How do other pet portrait artists showcase their work?
3
How can customers contact artist for commissions?
4
How can this business grow over time?
Discover Phase
Competitive Analysis
After getting an understanding of our primary focuses for the new website, we conducted competitive analysis of the website and similar products and services.
From this research of reviewing existing features and functions across competitive products, we were able to uncover the most common features and use cases for the different and similar products and services in commission pet portrait services.
We looked at 4 different competitors:
Define Phase
Site Map
Before diving into designs, it was essential we had a grasp on how we wanted the MVP of the site's information architecture to be organized.
Click image to enlarge.
User Flow
After organizing the site's architecture, the next step was to outline how the site would flow, especially for its primary flow for the MVP.
Click image to enlarge.
Develop Phase
Wireframes
Branding Ideation
I asked my client these 4 main questions:
1
Do you want your business to have branding similar to your personality, or your style?
"I think since my art is a part of me, it would make sense for the branding to be similar to my personality and as if I were to brand myself."
2
What kinds of color palettes stand out to you most?
"I really enjoy pastels and earth tones. Fall is my favorite season, but I hate the cold. My favorite color is a pastel yellow, but I also love greens."
3
What is the overall "vibe," mood, or style you want utilized in your brand?
"I want to showcase my personality through my branding and my art. I want it to be fun with nodes to pop culture and the styles I create in."
4
Do we want to brand around pets, art in general, or you?
"I want this to grow to art commissions of any kind, but I love animals so much that I really want to start with that, and I don't plan on not painting pets any time soon."
Mood Board
From our ideation conversation about branding and digital presence, I dove into creating a mood board for my client's website.
The mood board's purpose is to provide a summary and have a visual summary of both party's understandings of the overall visual aesthetic captured in the website.
The mood board includes scenes she mentions she enjoys, as well as games and activities she enjoys, and an image of my client since we want this branding to also capture them.
Click image to enlarge.
Style Tile
After my client approved the mood board, decorative font family, and color palette, it was time to create the style tile for the website.
The style tile serves as a visual summary of UI elements that will make up the whole website once it is designed and live.
Click image to enlarge.
Summary & Next Steps
Our next steps for this project include:
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Iterate designs and upgrade them from medium-fidelity to high-fidelity.
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Bring the high-fidelity mockup designs to the client's CMS, Wix.
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Launch the site!
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Continue to market this service with potential customers.