For businesses with a brand package
You paid for a real brand. Your website should honor it.
A brand package deserves better than a template that almost matches. I build custom sites from brand guides, and your designer will recognize their work.
What to hand over
Send whatever you have. If something is missing, I will chase it down with your designer directly so you do not play messenger.
- Logo files
- SVG or the original vector files. Every lockup and mark you have.
- Color specs
- Hex or CMYK values from the brand guide. I convert and test them for screen contrast.
- Fonts
- Font names and license files. I confirm web licensing and set up fast self-hosted loading.
- The brand guide
- The PDF your designer made. Voice, spacing, photo style, the rules. I follow it.
- Photography
- Brand photos if you have them. If not, I will tell you exactly what to shoot.
How it works
From brand guide to design system to site.
01
Read
I read the whole brand guide before designing anything. The site should feel like the brand, not near it.
02
Translate
Print brands need translation for screens: contrast checks, type scales, button states, spacing systems. I build a web design system from your brand, and document it.
03
Build
The site is built from that system. Every page your designer never had to think about (forms, errors, search results) still looks like your brand.
04
Return
Your designer gets a link and a spec. Most tell me it is the first time a developer kept their brand intact.
The gap
What a brand guide never covers.
A good brand guide answers about 40 percent of the questions a website asks. The rest get answered by whoever builds the site, and that is where brands fall apart. These are the decisions I make on your behalf, in your brand, and then write down.
- Every state a button can be in
- A brand guide shows one button. A website needs the resting state, the hover, the pressed state, the disabled state, and the version on a dark background. Five decisions, all of them yours to make, none of them in the PDF.
- Forms and errors
- Nobody designs the error message in a brand guide. So it ends up looking like a system alert from 1998 sitting inside a beautiful page. Form fields, labels, validation, and the thank you screen all get designed to match.
- Type that works at phone size
- Print type scales rarely survive a 375 pixel screen. Headings get rebuilt as a web scale that holds the same feel and stays readable in one hand.
- Color that passes contrast
- Brand palettes are chosen on white paper under good light. On a screen, some of those pairings fail accessibility contrast. I test every combination and find the fix that keeps the palette intact.
- The pages nobody planned
- Search results, empty states, the 404 page, a long article. These are where an off-brand site gives itself away, and they are the pages a template will never handle for you.
No brand guide?
You can still build. Here is the order.
Plenty of good businesses have a logo, two colors somebody picked years ago, and nothing else written down. That is workable. The site gets a small design system of its own: a type scale, a palette that passes contrast, spacing rules, and component styles, all documented at the end.
It is not a brand. It is enough of one to build on, and if you hire a designer later, they inherit something coherent instead of a mess to undo.
The order matters though. Brand first, then site, every time. A rebrand halfway through a build means redoing design work you already paid for, and it is the single most common way a fixed price project turns into a change order.
So if a rebrand is anywhere in your plans for the next year, do it first. I will wait, and the site will be better for it.
Brand designers: I am the developer you can hand clients to.
Your brand work survives the build. You get credited on the site, your client gets one person to call, and you get the finished link for your portfolio. If you have a client who needs a site built right, email me.
Ready to talk?
A 20 minute call. No pitch. What you need and what it costs.
Or text 778-692-5555 or email mj@duforddigital.com. I reply within two business days.