The nice thing about being less than well known on the web is that I can make mistakes like the current Papertree re-design without taking much flak for it. Unfortunately that doesn’t help much when it comes to the impression one might get by viewing your site for the first time.
Sure it might seem crazy to openly draw attention to the fact that I believe I produced less than acceptable work with this redesign, but I am open to admitting my mistakes.
First things first. I am a firm believer in re-align rather than redesign. I threw that out the window on this one. The following is a critique of the most recent redesign of Papertree Design, while I don’t believe it is a total failure I do feel that it is less than successful in execution.
Overall cause for this unrest. I believe there is one major reason behind why I view this most recent redesign as less than successful. In an attempt to stick with my usual minimal style I simply went overboard, in this case minimal without proper execution. It was rushed. I failed to to give thought to the future of Papertree Design and myself as a freelancer/business owner.
In this case I was designing with a certain style as the driving force, rather than a problem/solution as the driving force.
The cause led to the following reasons for my critique. While the idea was thought out the execution was rushed. I felt it was time for a change, busy with client work I decided that this change was going to have to be executed quickly. Bottom line not enough planning behind the execution and too rushed to get it done and launched. Ideally I should have held on to what I had and went ahead with proper planning, even if an already busy schedule meant pushing this project further into the future.
Where I made mistakes.
What we do is clear and prevalent. What I would like the end user to focus on and where I would like to point I believe is also clear and prevalent. The navigation is well put.
But… the site lacks life and personality, there is no feeling behind the message,. While the work being presented and the client list or even the writing contained within may give the client reason to consider working with us, the presentation of the whole package lacks the personality that is going to help us to win over the competition. While minimal can speak volumes if executed correctly, in this case it does not, it becomes unimpressive.
Branding. It lacks proper branding and message.
Focus. While I proceeded to draw attention to many of the areas I have been working to maneuver in to the brand I lost focus of some of what I believe to be key elements in a clients decision to work with Papertree.
Ok I will stop there before I get overly critical. These I believe are the major reasons for my feelings of displeasure towards the current design. It is not total failure and overall it is after all still performing, however it is not performing as I envisioned.
Needless to say the phrase “back to the drawing board” applies here and things are already underway. The plan is to re-align based on the previous version of the site returning things to normal. Perhaps no one will notice, like we were out to lunch.