01Web Design
Web design witha commercial jobto do.
Most websites are judged on whether they look current. That is the wrong test. A site earns its cost by moving someone from curious to in touch, and design is the instrument that does it.
01The problem
The problem with looking current
A site can be handsome and still fail. It happens when design is treated as decoration applied after the fact — a colour palette, a typeface, some photography — rather than as the thing that decides what a visitor notices first, what they understand second, and whether they act at all.
The sites that work are the ones where someone has made hard choices about hierarchy. What earns the largest type. What gets cut. Which single action each screen is asking for. Those decisions are invisible when they are right and expensive when they are wrong.
02What it involves
What the work actually is
- Art direction
- The visual argument the site makes before a word is read — composition, imagery, restraint, and the confidence to leave space empty.
- Typography
- A type system with a real hierarchy, tested at the sizes people actually read at, on the screens they actually use.
- Layout & hierarchy
- What goes where, and why. Each screen designed around one job rather than assembled from available components.
- Interface design
- Buttons, forms, navigation and states designed as part of the whole rather than inherited from a framework.
- Design system
- Components and tokens documented so the site can grow after launch without drifting away from itself.
- Mobile design
- Designed at small sizes as its own composition, not a desktop layout squeezed into a narrower column.
03How it runs
How the work runs
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01
Understand the decision
What your visitor is weighing up, what they need to see to move, and where the current site loses them. This is a conversation, not a questionnaire.
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02
Art direction
Two or three genuine directions, shown as real screens with real content. Not moodboards — you cannot judge a website from a collage.
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03
Design the system
Type scale, spacing, colour and components resolved once so every subsequent screen is a decision about content rather than about style.
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04
Design the pages
Every template, every state — empty, loading, error, long content, short content. The states are where most designs quietly fall apart.
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05
Hand to build
Design and build sit together here, so nothing is thrown over a wall and nothing arrives compromised by what turned out to be impractical.
04What you get
What you end up with
- Art direction across two or three routes
- A documented design system
- Every page template, at every breakpoint
- Interaction and motion specification
- Every state designed, not just the happy path
05Related work
Where this shows up
06Honestly
When this is the wrong service
07Questions
Web Design — common questions
01 How long does a web design project take?
Design on a typical marketing site runs four to seven weeks before build begins, depending on how many templates there are and how quickly feedback comes back. Larger sites take longer, and we would rather tell you that at the start than discover it in week six.
02 Do you work from a template?
No. Every project starts from the content and the commercial objective rather than from a layout that already exists. That is slower and it is the reason the result does not look like everyone else.
03 Can you design without building it?
Yes, and we hand over a documented system your developer can work from. But design and build sit together for a reason — decisions that look fine in a static file sometimes cost you performance, and catching that early is cheaper.
04 Do you work with businesses outside Norwich?
Most projects run remotely and always have. Being in Norwich means clients in Norfolk can start with a coffee if they want to; it has never been a requirement.
08Also relevant