A little over a month ago, a friend of mine was attempting to update her dad’s web site, a life planning and financial services company based in Ontario, Canada. She was using Microsoft Publisher and then manually updating each individual file on her dad’s web server. I offered to help her make things a little bit easier. Unfortunately, I got a little carried away with things…

As mentioned above, the original site was done in Microsoft Publisher. This meant everything was using Microsoft’s proprietary code to display pages. This also meant trying to convert that into standard HTML was way more trouble than it should be. So instead of trying to figure out Microsoft’s code, I started to recode the site manually.

As I started coding more and more, the designing in me started thinking “That looks weird there, so what if I do this instead…”. Within a day, I had a completely redesigned site. But not the one you see online today. The original design tried to stay close to the original site design using a green background and navigation under the logo. A cleaner font was also used, but was bold and blocky. This blocky design seemed more intimidating than welcoming. Just as soon as I finished the design, I tossed it out and went back to the drawing board.

Some elements I kept from the original redesign, including the headers within the content area. Other changes were made. The green background was dropped in favor of an off-white color. The header was changed from a very bold and in-your-face design to a smaller font size. A graphical logo was also introduced (as suggested by the client).  The site’s navigation was also moved to the top-right of the site.

Upon showing the new design of the site to the client, they requested an update to every part of their brand, including letterheads, business cards, and envelopes.

All aspects of Lakeshore Financial now match, from web site to documents.

What was to be some simple assistance in coding a web site turned into a full-on redesign package. Not something any of us expect, but definitely proud of the outcome.