Edinburgh Design School

The Creative Outcome

Taking inspiration from ceramic tradition, we began developing potential colour palettes using a combination of earth tones and striking accent colours to mimic pottery and dyes. Eventually, we landed on a contrasting, neutral trio of creams and browns, with a striking Tyrian purple accent to cut through when needed. This kept true to the calm atmosphere the brand required, with enough bursts of colour for fun and engagement.

For the typeface, we explored a sans-serif direction that kept a handcrafted, textured edge. After analysis of numerous typefaces, we landed on Bricolage Grotesque, whose very name in French means “improvising something you need by combining or repurposing readily available materials” – a fitting quality for ceramics. With Bricolage chosen for the brand’s headers, we introduced Mulish for body copy and buttons; an evenly-balanced typeface which allows the eyes to rest between visually captivating sections.

A pattern was needed to introduce movement to the brand whilst still keeping its contemporary edge. Looking back to the source material, we referenced pottery bowls and developed a repeating array of semi-circles to frame and bleed off the different sections on the site, helping the eye along the vertical expanse. This was eventually used in other places as well, such as quotation marks at the beginning of testimonials and the outer edges of text sections.

Further visual modifications were applied to the shape language of graphical elements. Buttons, hero images and course modals were designed with a mixture of rounded and straight edges for visual diversity, yet also functioning as a reference to the brand’s logo: a square and a circle. As such, the website slots in as a visual extension of the logo, staying true to the client’s vision whilst evolving its application further.

Once the website was built, all of the above visual references were implemented into a responsive Mailchimp design. The template was constructed in such a way as to allow the client to simply slot in images and text where needed, with the graphical flourishes built and embedded around them in such a way that all email communications maintain a high level of design quality without needing to be modified.