Today is the day!! I recently shared on my stories that I have something exciting cookin’, and I am SO thrilled to finally share the new branding and website redesign for LOMBARD & FIFTH with you! The new site is officially LIVE! This has been in the works for the past 6 months or so, and I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to see it all come together.
In this era of 5 second attention spans and swiping through 20 IG stories before your morning coffee, leaning into focusing more on my blog at times feels unsure and like I am walking on shaky ground. And at other times, when I think about how much I still love getting lost in some of my favorites like THE STRIPE, THE-ATLANTIC-PACIFIC, IN THE FROW and looking up 20 minutes later with a happy post fashion rabbit hole feeling, I think “no, there is still a space for this.” A space for us fashion girls to dive just a little deeper. To look just a little longer. To savor a little bit more of someone’s take on her favorite things.
I found my design team NARI CREATIVE through another creator, by a chance watching of her stories one day, while she was sharing her own rebranding. As soon as I looked through the NARI website, their approach to building a brand vision and applying it in a straightforward, no unnecessary frills kind of a way, I knew that this was the one. The most important thing to me was visually sharing my stylistic voice, expanding my blog to have a larger focus on shopping (think “scrolling through Saks, but someone’s already done the work of curating all of your favorites!) and giving daily bites of style inspiration a la “Daily Looks”. Basically, a one stop shop, for the modern day fashion gal. You can browse by season – FALL/WINTER to SPRING/SUMMER, by occasion in SPECIAL OCCASION and some of my favorite finds are always HOME DÉCOR.
I’ll be adding more and more categories to the shop pages (can’t wait for all the holiday shopping lists!) so be sure to check those regularly. I also wanted a way to share more style, beyond just linking my looks in blog posts, so look out for many more “shopping” moments, within each new blog post. Lastly, I wanted the site to be very user friendly, so navigating all the categories is a breeze with lots of sub categories if you’re looking for more specific inspo.
THE HOW TO OF BRANDING:
Though this next part is more niche, and mostly useful for fellow creatives who might be looking to go through this process, I thought I’d still share, because it might be helpful across other fields and professions, whether you are a small business owner or simply want to learn how the process of creating a brand identity comes to life.
So, what was the process from start to finish? We began with lots of homework for me. I answered an extensive questionnaire which asked for everything from “What is your mission statement” “Meaning behind your business name” to “Describe your audience. Who is she? What is her typical day like?” This was an amazing exercise to make myself really dig deep and really connect with my point of view, my audience and my goals for the future. Then I had to get to work creating specific Pinterest boards, pinning visuals, fonts, design elements, which I felt spoke to my brand. This part was my favorite, though also more challenging than I thought it would be.
The key was to EDIT, EDIT, EDIT. You can’t just hand in 100 pins you like and expect someone to decipher what your creative voice is. Here, less was absolutely more.
With the broad strokes of both my visual aesthetic vision and my “voice” now established, Brooke at NARI CREATIVE could now got to work creating the skeleton for what would be my new site.
We went through a few rounds of changes and tweaks before finalizing all the elements, from the color science of my brand to the typography and of course logos. From there, we went onto the site design. Where certain pages would live, what was top priority and what we could lose. How everything would flow top to bottom and how to make the site as user friendly as possible. We ended up with a destination which I think will yield itself well for both someone popping by for a quick dose of style inspo at “Daily Looks” and a lengthy dive scroll through a library of style. And as I mentioned, those SHOP pages are definitely my pride and joy.
One of my biggest take aways from going through this process, (and really the reason I wanted to dedicate a lengthy blog post to the topic of (re)branding), was to share how just much a collaborative effort on something like this, is truly key. I am a creative through and through and though I had a million ideas on how I wanted my site to look and feel, I would have completely fallen flat on many parts of the execution, had I tried piecing it together through various different sources. At least for me, having a fully comprehensive start to finish branding process with one company was a huge plus.
I hope you enjoy this new space and I look forward to bringing you lots of style, home decor and diy inspiration!
