Envy Web+Design Blog

Client: Pembroke Patisserie, Wanaka Brief: To create some double-sided recipe cards to promote their oatcake Hors D'oeuvres recipes in time for Christmas. Pembroke Patisserie have some delicious Oatcakes  that they sell at the Wanaka Farmers market, online and at various food stores across the country.  They wanted to give people some suggestions for how they can be used for entertaining - on a cheeseboard instead of a cracker, or topped with some fresh ingredients to make impressive, but easy, hors d'oeuvres. For the design we followed the rustic style we created used for their business cards and packaging  - creating a vintage feel using a typewriter-style typeface and hand drawn design elements.  We had these printed as A6 postcards for people to pick up from the market, but also made them available for free download online:   -  Download the Easy oatcake Hors D'oeuvres Recipe Here -  - For a Printer Friendly version with no images, Click Here -     

Client: Insiteful and BuildInsite, Wanaka Brief: To create oull up banners to be used promotionally at tradeshows that reflect the existing branding for both companies. Developed in Wanaka, BuildInsite is a tool for builders - to help them to easily comply with the Building Act and provide additional value to their clients.  HomeOversite allows you to keep track of your property's information, insurance, maintenance, warranties, expenditure, or to simply record notes and file key documents – all of this helping to enhance resale and prevent any oversights. CEO Lauren McKay wanted the pull up banners to be simple in design and to reflect the bold and simple design used throughout the website, as well as in print and web adverts.  buildinsite.co.nz    homeoversite.co.nz  

Christmas is fast approaching and with it - gift wrapping! We want to help make your presents as pretty as can be, so have created a free printable set of Watercolour Christmas Gift Tags. Choose from 'Merry Christmas', 'Seasons Greetings' or 'Just For You'. (You could even use the last one for any other gift-giving occasion). Print them out (make sure you set it to 'fit to page'), trim to size and punch a hole where indicated. You can then thread some pretty string or ribbon through and attach the tag to your gift. These will be best if you are able to print them on a thick A4 card.   - Download the Free Watercolour Christmas Gift tags -     *Please note: These gift tags are for personal use only and are not to be sold or distributed without correct attribution. Thank you

Client: Otautau New Life Centre, Otautau, Southland Brief: To create a new website for a family church - to provide a great source of information to promote events, ministries and community efforts. Both for church members and visitors. Otautau New Life Centre had an existing website, but it had very limited functionality and was outdated in design and construction. A thriving community in Otautau, the church wanted a website that would more accurately portray their personality and presence. Top features needed for the website were availability to promote events, upload messages in video and audio format, and promote their many community initiatives and in-house ministries.  We built the website on a Wordpress platform, on a theme designed especially for churches, which gave them all the features that they asked for, as well as some additional features they can access in the future such as Woo Commerce for selling tickets to events, and also selling products. The colour scheme was taken from their logo, using fresh blues and greens. www.otautaunewlife.com

Client: José Oliver - Marriage & Civil Union Celebrant Brief: To create a simple, brochure style website to promote José Oliver's celebrant services. First we created her  logo  and business cards  which gave us the design cues to carry through to the website. The design was kept minimal and bright - with a clean white background, bright images and pops of colour from the branding style guide. The key internal pages included a sidebar to aid movement and flow through the site, and her contact details were made prominant  to ensure the important information was readily available on every page.

Client: Rubys Cinema, Lonestar and Basecamp Climbing Centre, Wanaka Brief: To design a full-page magazine advertisement for the Whytewaters publication  to promote these three businesses as a destination for entertainment, activities and food. Wanaka is an Alpine tourist town, and these three businesses form an entertainment hub on Cardrona Valley Road, on the way out to Cardrona. We created a colourful advert that featured the iconic building at the top of the advert, which is highly recocnisable when driving out to the destination. Each business then had a strip in which we promoted their key selling points and used eye-catching images.

Client: José Oliver - Marriage & Civil Union Celebrant, Wanaka Brief: To create business cards that would reflect José's vibrant personality and portray her as a fun, quirky but also professional, Marriage and Civil Union Celebrant.  After working together to create a new logo for José , the next project we collaborated on was her business cards. They needed to reflect the design style of the logo, but we wanted to also have some fun with colour and so we used the watercolour backgrounds on the front and back. On the front of the card the retro flowers took centre stage, framing the text from the logo at the bottom of the card. On the back, we used the orange watercolour as the background with the text overlaid in the centre.  Tidy Design  printed the business cards for us on 350gsm card stock, with a matt laminate on both sides. They also rounded the corners for us which was a key design feature for José. Click here to see her full logo design.

Client: José Oliver - Marriage & Civil Union Celebrant, Wanaka Brief: To create a logo that would reflect José's vibrant personality and portray her as a fun, quirky but also professional, Marriage and Civil Union Celebrant. José is establishing herself as a Wedding Celebrant based in Wanaka, but also looking after weddings throughout the wider Otago region including her hometown of Oamaru. She loves people; hearing their stories and helping them create wonderful ceremonies to mark their special days. We worked together sharing ideas using boards on Pinterest. Together we investigated many different motifs for the logo, but kept coming back to the idea of retro styled floral imagery. The font was kept simple, in colour and style, so that her name was easy to read, and we developed the colour palette from some Autumn themed images José found online. The use of a watercolour background added some flair to the colours and can be used throughout her marketing colateral.  Click here to see her business card design.  

Client: North Waikato Physiotherapy, Huntly Brief: To update an existing website to make it both responsive and more visually appealing. North Waikato Physio  in Huntly had an existing website but it was not mobile friendly (did not adjust depending on the device the website was being viewed on). To keep up with with changes to  Google's search algorithms , and to make the website more modern and easier for their customers to use, they approached us to update the website. "In early 2014, the landscape in which businesses operate changed forever when Internet usage on mobile devices exceeded PC usage."  - searchenginewatch.com " GSMA Intelligence  reports that the number of active mobile subscriptions now  exceeds the total world population ."  - wearesocial.net This means that if your website is not mobile friendly, then you are potentially missing out on a huge number of users. Although people may still use a non-responsive website, their experience will be marred by a site that is difficult to navigate on a mobile device. Furthermore, if they are searching on Google from their mobile phone,  websites that are mobile friendly will be ranked higher ! According to  Comscore data , online..

High quality, eye-catching images are key to a professional looking website. But professional stock photos can be expensive! Sometimes for our clients' projects, we need to help keep costs down as much as possible, and one great way to do that is by using free stock image sites. Websites like Shutterstock  and iStock  have amazing photos (and if you can plan it into your budget, please do!), but if you have a limited budget and are prepared to spend a bit longer looking around, you can often find some very comparable images for free (or for a small donation if you desire.)   Here is my list of our favourite FREE stock image websites: 1.  Pixabay This is my absolute favourite source of free images. There is a wide range of shots, ranging from quite ammature to very high quality. This is always my first stop when sourcing free stock images. (The image for this post is from  Pixabay ) 2.  Death To The Stock Photo This one is subscription based, so a bit different. But if you sign up to their emails (you can choose either a free or paid plan with varying benefits) then they email you free monthly photos. The photos are usually taken around a theme, and have a modern, muted (dare I say hipster) look&n..