Case Study: Brand & Website Design in a Day
My Brand and Website design studio designed a children’s brand and Wix website, AND provided product photography, all within a 24 hour period. Here’s what happened.
Introducing City & Sea VIP Days
In January 2025, I began offering VIP Days. Originally, I planned for these VIP days to be solely for past clients that needed design and website support. Some of my clients need membership pages set up, a product category in their eCommerce store, or social media templates designed. Rather than completing one-off tasks here and there and charging an hourly rate, I decided to offer VIP Days. That way, rather than derailing my day with minor tasks for little return, I can offer my clients a super impactful day of work that will move the needle for their business.
Along came Pinch of Play
When Madison from Pinch of Play contacted me, I knew I wanted to work with her and support this amazing brand she’s built in any way I could. Her non-profit organization provides purposeful play kits to preschool aged children, and donates proceeds to children fighting cancer in hospitals. She told me that due to the non-profit nature of her business, her budget was pretty low. Too low for my custom website design package. I told Madison about my VIP Day package. I normally don’t offer brand and website design during a single day because, well, it takes a ton of time. But for Pinch of Play, I wanted to make it happen. I ensured Madison that if I wasn’t able to complete the tasks in a single day, I’d extend the project out at no cost to her. Miraculously, we did in fact pull it off in a single day. Here’s what that day looked like.
The VIP Day Timeline
8-10pm the night before: I begin looking at Madison’s Pinterest vision board to get an idea of the look & feel she was envisioning for her brand. I was pumped to find that her vision was very much aligned with my own, which almost always makes for a seamless design partnership.
9-11am the morning of: I sent Madison an email and let her know I was starting. I started with a color palette. I knew I wanted playful, childlike colors, but wanted to steer away from anything to bold and jarring. I created a spectrum of colors found in the rainbow, and muted each of them for a colorful brand color palette that didn’t feel overwhelming.
Then, I shopped on Creative Market for fonts. I wanted a playful handwritten font that was easy to see at different scales, so nothing too busy or funky. I searched “handwritten serif font” and “handwritten block letter font” and tested about 12 or so fonts before landing on the one I liked the most. It came as a duo with a script font that I also integrated into the logo.
11am-1pm: I put together a concept presentation for Madison, creating graphics with the color palette and logo design I created. I ended up eliminating some of the color palette options. When a color palette hue doesn’t play well with multiple other hues, I usually let it go. That’s because I want it to be easy and intuitive for my clients to create marketing materials and graphics with the brand color palette. If multiple colors clash within the palette, I can’t expect someone who isn’t a designer not to use those colors together. My client loved the brand concept overall, and after a few tweaks, we finalized the branding.
1pm-3pm: Madison sent me 3 play kits to attempt to photograph with my 4 year old. While my one year old napped (because we would not have been able to pull this off with him in the room) I set up the play kits and had our babysitter sit and interact with Maura and the kits while I took photos. It was a super dark and rainy day, so I was nervous the photos wouldn’t turn out, but I actually love the darker, moodier vibe of the photography. It feels like a cozy childhood day at home, which is exactly the way I want people to feel when they see this brand.
I used a preset I already had saved on Lightroom and edited all of the photos from my phone. This saved hours of editing and they turned out perfect to utilize on the website, which was the next step.
3-5pm: Website time. One of the main reasons this worked, was because Madison already had a website built in Wix. She didn’t want to change any of the content aside from swapping some of the photos, so I was literally just redesigning existing content for her. If I had to start a website from scratch, there’s no way I would be able to do that in an afternoon. I spent the last 2 hours of my babysitter time mocking up her homepage for approval.
5-8pm: Break for dinner, gym, and kids bed time
8pm-12am: I took to Wix to build the homepage I had already mocked up. I was able to do this pretty quickly because I could just create a new section on an existing home page, copy paste the content, redesign the section, and delete the original one. I repeated this process until the homepage, about page and subscribe & save page were redesigned. By 11pm, my head was spinning and I felt delirious. I twas time to call it.
The next morning I hopped on to make some minor tweaks to the website before telling my client it was all ready for her review. That very same day, the website and new branding went live.
Before and Afters
Check out some samples of what the Pinch of Play brand and website design looked like before our VIP day and what it looked like by the end of it:
The Pinch of Play homepage before our VIP day:
The Pinch of Play homepage after our VIP day:
The Pinch of Play brand design before our VIP day:
The Pinch of Play homepage after our VIP day:
I am so proud that we were able to achieve SO MUCH for this wonderful business in just 24 hours. I will be back to share measurable results that Pinch of Play sees from this brand and website revamp. Can’t wait to see what’s in store for this brand!
If your business is outgrowing your current branding, it may be time for a revamp. Elevating your brand and website will build credibility and trust with your target audience, and cause them to remember you when the time comes for them to purchase what you’re selling. Let’s chat about how we can elevate your brand and grow your business.
