ROOTS INTERIOR DESIGN

Roots Interior Design is an interior design company that specializes in sourcing bespoke fixtures, fittings, features, and furniture. They’re known for their attention to detail and unique style, and tend to attract wealthy clientele that are willing to pay for a premium service and high end products.

I was excited to take on this Briefbox brief, not only for the purpose of a personal project, but because I have secretly wanted to create something for an interior design company.

Deliverables

The client (Roots Interior Design) needed brand identity, stationery (letterhead + business card), website, and a brochure created.

Client’s Wants, Needs, and Inspiration

They like minimal fashion and architecture brands with the less-is-more approach. Any images shouldn’t compete with any information provided on the website, brochure mockup, etc. Their inspiration comes from high end architecture firms and bespoke design companies.

The Hoxton and Benchmark were provided as examples of the direction they wanted to go in for this project.

Brand Buzzwords

• Luxury

• Quality

• Trust

• Value

• High end

• Beautiful

• One of a kind

I like to write down key points or important things that I will mostly likely need to refer back to at some point during the design process along with a few sketches and doodles.

The inspiration images I chose and felt drawn to for this particular project featured neutrals, and in some cases, had an accent colour. With that said, I decided to not mess with them, and applied the same formula to the deliverables.

Butler was a font that I originally saw on Pinterest years ago and had pinned, but forgot about it until I was migrating some pins from my personal account over to my business account. It has a polished, sophisticated feel to it, so I used it for the main logo, the secondary logo you see on the square business card, and on the website mockup.

I created this standard business card first as an exercise for the #dailyui challenge, then used it as a starting point for the rest of this project. I had plans to start this project and design a different logo for the exercise, however I realized that it would be wise to combine the two.

Square business cards tend to stick out in our minds because we’re so used to using and seeing the standard sized business cards. I made the decision to also add in the dark, rich blue used on my moodboard (and taken from one of the inspiration images) to use for this alternate card along with the secondary logo, and opted to use Roboto for the information on the back of the card.

The colour blue signifies trust, stability, and reliability, which all things that clients want and deserve from a business they are purchasing from.

If you’re interested in watching me design a bit of the brochure, you can view my mini progress video here.

At the last minute before I posted my final images to Instagram, I decided to lighten up the colour of the page on the right. It was originally a buttery pecan brown that looked great on my laptop, but not on my phone.

For the letterhead, I leaned towards a more conservative, simple design as opposed to some of the more colourful and creative letterhead designs I came across during my “gathering inspiration” phase.

Please don’t get me wrong - creative letterhead designs are fantastic. I wanted to stay true to the less-is-more approach since the main focus of the letterhead is the content itself.

Just like the alternate design for the square business card, I incorporated Roboto into the design for the website mockup. You can see it’s used in the header navigation as well as the body copy and the call-to-action button.

Results

I’m pleased with my approach to this brief and feel I managed to produce deliverables that reflected the needs and wants of the client. I felt a little bit like a fish out of water since it’s been quite some time since I’ve done any graphic design work, even for personal projects, but I found my groove as time went on.

This project had a suggested time frame of five days to complete all components. I spoke on it in the corresponding blog post for the standard business card, and I did aim to have it completed in that time frame, until I realized that it was best for me personally to work on it bit by bit without putting any restrictions on it.

I am fully aware that my approach is not how it works traditionally during the design process with a client, so I took full advantage of letting my ideas marinate before revising anything.

Resources

All of the images used and gathered throughout the inspiration process are from Pexels, a stock photo and video website that is free for both personal and commercial use.

The brochure mockup and branding mockups used for the style guide/moodboard, letterhead, and website are from Moyo Studio.

(Please note: The mockup links mentioned above are affiliate links, which means that I may earn a small amount if you choose to purchase the mockups through the links.)

The standard business card mockups are ones I have had for a while now. (Like years.) While I cannot find the direct link to the two free ones I have, they are included in this pack to purchase from the same creator.

The square business card mockups are available for free from the Graphic Pear website for registered users.