Last week I was able to reveal my new and improved website, the result of several months of brainstorming and hard work. I was tremendously supported through this process by Niki Campbell and Kim Timothy, the dynamic duo behind Brand Brilliant.
But let’s back up a bit. In 2011 I built my website on WordPress by myself and worked on it fairly regularly over the years to keep the information in it up to date. I actually did have people commenting on it here and there, saying they liked the site and it did what it needed to do for me for many years. I always knew that it was fine but truthfully I wanted it to be great. I wanted to be able to describe the facets of what I do more clearly and do a better job of showcasing some examples of my work. I also wanted it to have a more contemporary look and feel.
I met Niki through a Royal Roads connection and reached out to her to see if she could help. She told me about the service that she offers with Kim: a “working together” way of building a new website. I very quickly decided that I was all in. I’m so glad I made that decision!
Niki and Kim and I spent four 4-hour sessions working on my site together. We started in May and finished in early October. This was party due to our schedules and ability to get together all in the same room over four sessions (!), but I found that having some time in between our sessions together allowed me time alone to do some content writing and image finding and allowed me to think more about what I really wanted and needed out of the site. I also hired a photographer and had some updated photos taken (thanks Roxanne Low!).
Working with professional web designer/developers was a fascinating process for me as a learning designer. Niki and Kim taught me a few things that are very relevant to my work as well, such as sites they go to for royalty/copyright-free images (that were different than the ones I was using), tips about working with images, and a recommendation for a free web-based software to use for image manipulation.
Overall, while redeveloping my website was a lot of work, it was such a worthwhile process and I’m very happy with the result. (And now I can move on to other things!) I invite you to explore it and reach out to me if you’d like to chat about anything that I do.