Our Rebrand, Part 2

Every design project has its challenges. But if you told me at the beginning of our Fenwick rebrand the only image on our entire website would be a single portrait of Isabella Fenwick … well, I would’ve smiled, nodded politely, and completely disregarded it as a possibility.

That’s what makes Fenwick’s web design such an accomplishment. Carina and Chris wove a fantastic brand story, one that made me reach deep to consider the kinds of features that make a content marketing company’s website stand out. The result? Fenwick’s writing principles are plastered all over our website in visual form:

• SIMPLE: Our fonts and colors are simple on purpose, nothing crazy. They are neutral, yet unique to our brand.

• PRECISE: Our wordmark uses sharp edges and thin lines. Every font on the website was selected with purpose.

• CONCISE: Did I mention there’s only one image on our website? Our copy and design is thoughtful, but not excessive, and primarily relies on typography.

• EVOCATIVE: Our stand-alone ‘F’ is not so simple. If you look closely, you’ll notice a ‘P’ and ‘F’ are fused together to represent the past and future. It’s subtle, yet revealing of who we are. 

• COMPLETE: If you have the first four principles, then you have this last one. Need I say more?

At Fenwick, we write and we design. And we accomplish those feats simultaneously through tremendous teamwork. In the case of our website, we employed the same process normally reserved for clients to produce a brand we are proud of.   

Let’s go back to when I first heard the Fenwick story. As a designer, I attempted to reflect the story to the team with color palettes and inspiration. The juxtaposition between the modern and romantic, the editorial and evocative was weighing on me. We couldn’t lean too heavily on the 18th-century Isabella Fenwick persona without incorporating contemporary design themes. 

The colors were the building blocks we used to lay the foundation of all that we needed to create. So I spent hours, and I mean hours, over the course of a few weeks experimenting with color combinations in an attempt to seamlessly fuse the past and future. Were bold colors the right match with a romantic wordmark, or vice versa?

Iterations came and went. When I was feeling stuck, I referred  to all the inspirational websites the team gathered and shared. As a designer, you can never be sure your initial work will immediately translate into the end product. But there are some exceptions, and the first wordmark happened to be perfectly Fenwick. By adding a few lines and curves to a simple F, the past and future evoked the exact emotion we were striving for.

But that’s only one small step. In design, you make some progress, hit a wall, change directions, and then keep moving cautiously—and that was certainly true for our rebrand. For instance, I started using the initial color palette on the site but quickly realized it wasn’t as stark as I wanted it to be. I really wanted the words on the page to pop, so it was back to the drawing board. I also searched long and hard for stock imagery that would reflect our brand, before realizing it just wasn’t us. For our website, the words needed to be the star of the show.  

But we kept pushing, and the work followed along. Engaging with only words was intimidating at first, but the final product is worth it: The variety of fonts and sizes framed within a variety of colors maintains a distinct visual aesthetic. It really proved that our words are powerful enough to stand on their own. With this emphasis on words, I also wanted to incorporate a design element that evoked turning pages. That’s how I settled on the scrolling feature that pushes blocks up and down the screen. Eventually, the copy, wordmark, and colors all fell into place. Before I knew it, our pages were mocked up and ready to be implemented. 

Going from nothing to something is the creator’s dilemma—the writer is particular of their outline in the same way a designer critiques a color palette. Even though the design work on the rebrand is wrapping up, this is still an early chapter in Fenwick’s story and I’m looking forward to what comes next. For now, please enjoy the website.