Andre J Cherry

Project Overview

With this project, I was tasked to build a martial arts academy brand from the ground up. First I established a look and feel of their brand with a logo and style guide. From there I designed and developed a responsive site with the overall goal of getting users to call the Academy enquiring about signing up for their free week trial.

Process

Prior to designing the logo and website I had to establish a target audience and the overall goal for the project. I provided the client with a questionnaire that provided me with a baseline of the project scoop. Once I understood what the client wanted, I provided the client with a strategy of what needed to be done to accomplish the project’s goals. The list of the task was as follows:

1. Create logo
2. Develop style guide
3. Strategize/ outline website content
4. Create sites Information Architecture
5. Design UI comps
6. Develop final website
7. Create content for social media platforms

Branding

I created a combination mark for the logo because I noticed martial arts gyms typically wore badges on their Karategi and wanted to design a logo that would look great on both a website and a badge. The color choice was obvious due to the academy name. I designed the logo with two martial artists squaring up because at the academy it’s a family environment, each student’s journey and development is shared with their peers and instructors.

Design

The academy wanted a modern design that is inline with self defense, discipline and health. I used primarily a clean foundation with shades of black and used red and yellow as the accents and headers of the site. This was a mindful decision for web accessibility purposes I understand users may have color blindeness or other visual impaired disabilities so I didn’t want to over due the red. San serif fonts were choosing to further the modern feel throughout the site.

Solution

I designed and developed a responsive website consisting of 10 pages. The website informs users about the benefits of practicing martial arts and the history of the disciplines offered. In addition, it also persuades users to call and/or visit the academy by highlighting the Free Pass throughout the site. Users would also be able to contact or sign-up for the free pass online.

What I learned

My take away from this project is that when approaching any project think about how to tell the companies story and use design as an opportunity to guide users to actions we want them to achieve. A website is like a funnel and at the end of the funnel the is the primary goal of the site.