CASE STUDY

The Law Office of Robert Starr

Project type: website redesign, UI/UX
2018

Context:

This was an online rebranding project for a prominent Los Angeles “Lemon Law” firm, looking to completely update their look and take them from a “typical lawyer website” to something that felt sleek, hip and modern – like the city of Los Angeles itself.

Challenges:

Like a lot of prominent firms, I did not have direct contact with the primary stakeholder (Rober Starr), but was working through an in-house marketing representative who would then ferry all information between me and Mr. Starr so providing written rationales of my work was as imperative as the verbal conversations I was having with the firm’s representative. 

For this project I also found myself having to sell the more design-forward idea to our in-house sales consultant, who was always very involved and vocal in the projects that we partnered on together. He was not initially convinced that the firm would approve any of the ideas that would be presented to the firm for production approval, so it was imperative that I also provide very clear communication with him in order to clear the path to the firm.

Consultation:

The firm wanted a lot of whistles and bells and there was a very robust conversation about how to improve upon the site that they had previously. Ultimately, to achieve the stated goals I initially designed multiple options, each one more boundary-pushing than the last, ultimately presenting three options to the firm for review and approval. The firm selected the most design-forward option of the three, which was then put into production and is shown below.

Project Scope:

• Update the typefaces to visually represent the more modern look the site was taking on
• Employ a color scheme that incorporated the lemon aspect to tie into the firm’s primary legal focus – but without it being extremely obvious
• Select and implement photography that speaks to the primary legal focus but that also felt cool and very 2017, then apply a duo-tone effect to the images to align them to the overall visual brand of the site
• Design a very sleek and up-to-date navigation structure that would translate well from desktop to mobile environments
• Implement non-traditional animation styles, in this case, lazy load and ticker features that take animation out of the banner to ensure that the site would not lose visitors due to load time issues that can occur with traditional hero banner animations