Karson & Co. is a modern calligraphy studio specializing in one-of-a-kind signage for timeless events, calligraphy education and luxury brand services. The New Jersey-based calligraphy artist offers custom wedding signage, wedding calligraphy and live on-site calligraphy that tells your story. As Karson embraces this next chapter, she reached out to us to refresh her branding and web design to better reflect the elegant, refined services she offers. Her work proves that the magic is in the details, so it was our goal to showcase the quality of her services. ✨

Our team at Monarch Design Co. came together to create a new brand and website for the calligraphy studio that tells Karson’s story, speaks to her target audience and embraces the big dreams she has for her biz! We’re taking you behind the scenes into our design process to give you a glimpse at how we brought this project to life, from crafting the perfect colour palette to choosing the typography pairings and creating a compelling, high-converting website. Let’s delve in!

It’s All In The Details: The Anatomy of a Brand

What is branding? A beautiful brand ≠ just a pretty logo! It is the visual story that spans all touchpoints of your business. From your logo to your web design, fonts, colour palette, tone of voice, tagline, imagery, business stationery and social media, a consistent brand makes your small biz credible and memorable to your dream client.

A Colour Story

Did you know that there is a whole field dedicated to studying how colour influences audience perception your brand? Every colour evokes a feeling, which influences how consumers interact with your brand (including their decision to buy from you)! 

Karson & Co.’s colour palette is intentionally curated with deep, muted navy, earthy terracotta, pale blue and light neutrals. By bringing in navy, her colour palette fosters trust, which honours Karson’s attention to detail while adding depth to her palette. We complemented this with an earthy terracotta, which mixes the energy of red with the cheerful, celebratory nature of yellow and orange while rounding out the colour with the calm, grounded energy of brown to create a warm and trustworthy feel. Paired with pale blue — a colour associated with tranquillity, gentleness, peace and serenity to showcase Karson & Co.’s elegance and stress-free client experience — and light neutrals for a touch of timelessness, simplicity and warmth, her palette is designed to draw her dream client in. ✨

Choosing the Perfect Typography Pairings

Along with the colour palette, fonts are a key part of writing a brand’s story (literally)! Since we want Karson’s beautiful calligraphy to stand out, we chose a bold serif and simple light sans serif to compliment her hand-lettering!

This bold serif draws on a traditional feel while adding a unique, trendy element that appeals to Karson’s target audience. Paired with a light sans serif, Karson & Co’.s typography radiates a welcoming, modern feel while allowing her calligraphy to shine.

As we designed Karson’s website, we also added a beautiful script font to draw on her hand lettering!

A Hand-Drawn Touch From the Heart

To complete Karson & Co.’s branding, our final detail was a calligraphy pen graphic to draw on Karson’s beautiful art. One of Karson’s main values is that the art of hand-lettering simply cannot be replicated with a computer-generated font, so we designed the visuals around the personal, hand-drawn nature of her work. With a heart detail representing the love stories she helps write, her brand is complete! Do you love how this branding came together as much as we do? 😍

Creating a Compelling, High-Converting Web Design to Match

Once we finalized the branding, our team went straight into translating Karson’s beautiful new brand into a visually stunning, high performing website to create a home for her calligraphy services! Your website is the modern-day shop window: it should draw people to explore the beautiful products and services you offer. Come along into our web design process!

1. High-Quality Visuals

Did you know that if your website looks outdated, most people will click off before they even look at what you have to offer?! 🤯 That’s why we filled Karson & Co.’s website with stunning, high-quality visuals. Professional photography breathes an air of credibility into Karson’s site while giving it a modern, updated feel. With beautiful images and videos throughout, her website’s visual story is consistent with her brand, creates visual interest and reflects the level of quality of her gorgeous calligraphy and hand-lettering services — making it impossible for website visitors to resist working with her!

2. Creating a Clear User Experience

So you’ve wowed your website visitor with your visuals … now where do you want the path to lead? Alongside the visuals, our team mapped out a user experience that encourages visitors to explore her services. A clear user experience creates a path that leads your visitor where you want them to go, whether that’s your shop page, your contact form or your booking page. To achieve this, our team used consistent headings throughout Karson’s site along with CTAs (or calls to action) so those clicks she’s getting on her beautiful new site lead to clients!

3. Optimizing the Site 🌱

Think about how many times you use Google throughout the day. Search Engine Optimization ensures that your website pops up in relevant organic searches that people conduct every single day!

So how did we optimize Karson & Co.’s website to work hard for her, not the other way around? To start, we made her website mobile-friendly, used alt tags and description metadata and incorporated copywriting rich with keywords to drive search traffic! We also created a blog for Karson to share her love of calligraphy while making her site search-friendly. 👏🏼

Check Out Karson & Co.’s Brand New Site here! ✨ 

Feeling Inspired to Refresh Your Small Business’s Branding and Website?

No matter what your budget is and how much time you have, we have SO many options to help you create a visually stunning and high-performing website that takes your small biz to the next level!

Looking to invest in a fully-custom brand and web design to finally take your small business to the next level? Our team is here to help you take flight. Head here to book with us!

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