Summer Web Design Projects
You’ll never catch me telling you what to do. Unsolicited feedback, giving or receiving, isn’t fun. I also won’t tell anyone they have to be a business owner. Just like I wouldn’t tell everyone to get married if they had no desire to.
To break up the monotony of the daily grind, I have my web design projects. This is how I started learning web design, just creating websites in my spare time. If you’d like to see what web design projects I’ve been cooking up, keep scrolling.
Squarespace Templates
I recently created two Squarespace template websites for online business owners, one for coaching and the other for creative service providers. Anyone looking for the sweet spot between DIY and a fully custom website, these templates are made for you!
Color Palette
Keeping the color palettes interesting, no beiges here!, I opted for brighter, bolder colors for the site catering to creatives since it can be harder to stand out in this space and being bold usually isn’t a turn off for potential clients compared to other industries.
For the coaching site, I opted for a more mellow, but not boring, cool toned palette of blues and purples that will stand out in the coaching industry. Without getting too deep into the color psychology of it all blue colors are more calming and lead people to trust you more. Go look up all the social media websites with blue logos.
The Creative Collective template mockup
Movement and Design
One of the key complaints I’ve heard from other business owners is feeling like their site isn’t dynamic enough.
It’s easy enough to add some movement to your website in Squarespace without bogging down your site with huge video files that take forever to load.
I added movement to both template sites with other fun design elements like squirming squiggles under key words and animations in different sections.
The Creative Collective has interactive gradients which I was excited to try out since they are a new design feature.
Included Pages
Both templates include the 5 most needed web pages, home, about, contact, services and mobile, along with a custom 404 page and optional blog.
Check out the templates in the shop.
Spec Site Project
It’s important to keep the creative juices flowing. This site is a reimagined version of a horror writer’s website that I found after reading their book American Appetites. I definitely recommend it if you like horror specifically in the early days of the American West.
I never like to critique websites without consent because this practice usually seems mean spirited. You’re essentially calling out design flaws publicly. Websites are constantly evolving, mine is no exception, so making changes big or small is essential.
Spec Site Refresh mockup
Author websites seem to go one of two ways. Providing almost no information, being very elusive and private, to entice people to click and buy their books to learn more.
The other route is providing too much information, never ending blocks of text or not formatting design elements properly for easy reading online or on mobile.
Image Galleries
I wanted to make a new version of this website to look more cohesive, bold and focus on the stories to capture potential readers attention.
This involved sourcing images from Unsplash, one of my favorite stock photo sites, and creating galleries with them on the homepage.
Each image is linked to a corresponding blog post where the prospective reader can learn a bit more about the story and continue reading by purchasing her book or other story collection.
The image gallery layout on the homepage makes it easy to customize and change in the future when new collections are released.
Colors and Fonts
Keeping with the American West theme, I wanted the title and header fonts to have a western vibe with the other fonts for paragraphs reminiscent of a typewriter. Then combine with a color palette leaning more into the horror vibes with stark, slightly menacing colors, black, white and red, while still being easy to read.
Check out the refreshed version of The Uncanny Raven.
Ready For A Refresh?
If you’re ready to hand over the reins on your DIY site for some data-driven design magic check out my VIP days or the Squarespace template shop.
