When you run your own business, taking time to experiment with your design process can be really challenging. But with the redesign of my web writing business site, Second and Park (Don’t freak; the new one isn’t up yet!), we really wanted to have fun and tinker with our normal way of doing things.

Look and Feel
For the look and feel of the site, we took inspiration from eclectic sources: The wallpaper behind the bar at Cafe Presse, the typewriting on the side of a bag of coffee, a beautiful blue-green colored door on a subway, a rainier cherry, articles from The Atlantic, and an old photo book.

Writing
As far as the actual writing was concerned, we wanted something very straightforward and as easy to make sense of as a menu board–but less formulaic. We also wanted the copy to be fun, without obscuring our main message (“I do web writing, mostly for design agencies”), one that is surprisingly difficult to communicate since a lot of folks don’t know what web copy is.

No-Computer Tuesday
We stepped away from the computer a number of times throughout the process, using sheets of paper and cut-out chunks of text to experiment with the placement of words on the page. Oddly, this lead to more than just a better layout–it actually helped us focus our overall strategy and generate better branding concepts.

Collaboration
One of the best things about having two people working at thingsthatarebrown is that we now have all sorts of opportunities to collaborate and inspire one another’s ideas about design, copywriting, and business. For the Second and Park redesign, collaboration was key, with each of us filling in the blanks for the other.

The re-vamped Second and Park hasn’t yet replaced the current landing page–but it will soon. Stay tuned.

* And one more thing: we should mention two great articles about content and design that we kept in the back of our minds in the course of this work–one by 37Signals and one
from A List Apart. Essentials, both of ‘em.