by Jess Larson, culinary content creator
Jess is one of our OG Food Blog clients. She had been blogging for a little while before we started to work together, and when she was ready to uplevel her brand, she came to us with a very clear vision for her brand and business. She noticed that a lot of the blogs were starting to look the same, and she really wanted to differentiate herself from the crowd. She specifically wanted to create something that was high-end in look and feel, and more engaging to the reader. She wanted the content to feel more like a magazine, than just straight blog text, and over the course of a couple of years, we worked together to really dial in that vision that she came to us with.
My partners at Weller Smith Design are so talented and I’m just so beyond proud of what we’ve created together. The feedback so far has been AMAZING. Everyone loves it.
—Jess Larson, Plays Well with Butter
We created a detailed brand guide and brand kit for Jess to use to engage with other brands to secure brand partnerships, and more.
Take a look through some of the design elements and custom styled sections we created for the recipe posts to help the content stand out and provide an engaging user experience.
With the initial redesign, we incorporated custom typefaces to help elevate the look and feel of the site. When Google announced upcoming updates with their core web vitals which implied that custom typefaces may affect web ranking due to Cumulative Layout Shift, Jess opted to swap out the custom typefaces for web-safe typefaces. We mocked up several styles and worked to get the site updated. In the end, we are proud to say that, even with a limited set of typefaces, we can still create a look and feel that is not only beautiful but also minimizes the impact on page load time.
It has been an absolute pleasure working with Jess over the last few years. She has a strong vision for her brand and an eye for detail, but she also is open to the thoughts and ideas that we bring to the table. Working with clients like Jess creates a truly collaborative process that brings such joy to the whole WSD team!