Brand and website design

With my little studio, I directed (and designed within) the creation of a brand suite, products, and comprehensive website for a new centre of rest.

Australia’s newest, and what would be one of the largest, retreat centres was opening up in Queensland in a special spot in the forest just fifteen minutes from the infamous Sunshine Coast. The aim? To connect us back to nature. To welcome in those looking for calm, a break, an escape. To teach urbanites the tools of healthy eating, growing your own food, nourishing your body and mind, and working your muscles in ways that they could take back to their fast city lives in order to slow down.

2015 Project

Scope

As part of my studio, we created a full brand, website and content strategy for this retreat centre heading to construction.

Role

Creative director
Designer
Developer

Services

Brand development
Art direction
Social media design
Website design
Website development

Animating the logo design to show the tree growing from the Haven centre (pulling in references to the growth you'll experience and your own home)

Creating natural lettering

The Haven retreat was being built in the countryside, surrounded by green. I conducted a site visit with the client and using nature as the core of the brand, we brought in various healthy and natural elements to create hand lettered words that connected back to Haven. These were digitally captured to be used across the website, social channels, and for the media. We also extended this concept into other natural materials and created stop motion clips from them. The still shots would also be applied to Haven products.

The words About, Services, and Events are shown made from twigs and leaves that we lettered against a white background

Our designer did a fabulous job of collecting the natural materials and crafting each letter.

Lettering made with tea into a stopmotion - this took us a long time!

The word Health is shown made from bright orange lentils in cursive form on a white background

Lettering made with lentils

The word Grow is shown made from dark brown soil in cursive form on a white background

Lettering made with soil

The word Sustainable is shown made from dark brown cocoa chips in uppercase letters on a white background with silver grey pebbles making flourishes around the letters

Lettering made with cocoa chips and pebbles

The word nourish is shown made from light colored oats in cursive form on a blue-grey background

Lettering made with oats - the designer did a wonderful job with this one as these are tricky to sculpt

Strategic product development

We came up with a number of ideas for how to make Haven a place you want to keep coming back to and create revenue streams beyond that of the centre itself. For this we strategized out a line of products including items that give you the feeling of Haven, resources such as a book for city-dwellers, and products that they make on site themselves such as loose-leaf tea mixes that align with their values and principles.

A cream colored metal mug with handlettering reading Life is either a great adventure or nothing at all - a quote by Helen Keller

Creating a long-lasting brand and website

We developed out the branding for Haven working a color palette that was both natural and inspiring, a custom icon library, and weaved this all into an extensive website design.

Orange icons including a bike and watering can are shown against a dark green background

The primary blog page design of the website

Creating all the collateral and socials

We created a comprehensive social design strategy & content plan. Using a mix of templates for quotes, tips & testimonials in combination with photography and brand features we could create a feed that would be both resourceful and attractive for the audience, consistently providing support for urbanites to slow down, showing off the retreats, workshops, and what Haven aspired to achieve.

A grid of 3x3 images are shown for the social media planning

A social media image with a quote text, this one by Sir Francis Bacon: Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake. The image displays the custom eye icon at the top.

A social media image with a quote text, this one by Ann Wigmore: The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison. The image displays the custom fork and knife icon at the top.

A social media image showing a tip about growing a balcony herb garden. The image uses a dark green background with white text and the tip number is large at a faded opacity in the top left corner.

A social media image showing a tip for yoga and tea. The image uses a dark green background with white text and the tip number is large at a faded opacity in the top left corner.

Eight squares are laid against a grey background where each square is an image of the social media post

The single blog post design with a unique scroller on categories and months

The events and workshop website page to find information and book programs

The website gallery page to show a slide show of the retreat