John Howrey
Design Leader
Theatrical
Crystal Clear
Arresting
Joanna Czech
When celebrity aesthetician throws herself into a new project, watch out! This collab may appear to be a world of grey but growing from $300k to $5M in three years brought a lot of color to this luxury lifestyle brand and studio.
I’ve worked across so many industries—cement mixers, oncology services, theatre posters, and now luxury retail and aesthetic services. What keeps me going is the knowledge that it all boils down to many of the same principles of communication. We all use point, line, and plane to develop visual experience. We all start design with research.Joanna Czech is an aesthetician and social media influencer. She knew that her website would be a critical component to her burgeoning brand but it wasn't getting the results she wanted.
The next phase was research and discovery, where we gathered documents related to the project including: analytics data, competitive research, content audits, etc.
For example, we found that Joanna's website was not optimized for mobile devices or search engines. There was little internal structure or storytelling in the info arch which made the site too static. They weren't driving people to purchase. Nor was any of Joanna's successful social being leveraged.
I'm a big believer in the power of collaboration.
In this case, Joanna's business partner, PR team, and our developers formed a tight core team. With weekly standups and regular working sessions, we plowed through the work—developing content, imagery, and code at the same time.
Once there were sketches, they were presented and tested with a selection of Joanna's most trusted clients. There was an overwhelming response to the chosen design. Joanna was also over the moon. That helped us align ourselves in the right direction on how best to move forward.
Joanna's products and services are luxury with a capital L-U-X so we have to create a clean and simple experience that didn't distract from the product or value props. Our strategy was to focus on typography with key imagery that sings.
The visual language evokes feelings of luxury and exclusivity. The landing page drove users to product or custom content. We focused, too, on aligning site content with the social strategy—people needed a reason to come to the site and would often land deep in a section rather than just browse from the homepage. But, once in, we entice them to stay and see more.
Information Architecture
User Research
Project Management
Digital Asset Production