Back in time... The making of my client website. 1st meeting with client.

Today was my first face to face meeting with Naomi from Two Thumbs Up.  Naomi is a friend of a friend and is on the brink of starting up her own community cultural development (CCD) company and seems very keen to place the promotions of her fledgling company in the hands of a fledgling graphic designer (ie. me!).. I'm excited because CCD (community-based arts & cultural projects) field is definitely an area I know heaps about having worked in it for almost 10 years prior to commencing fulltime studies, so I felt I was able to quickly get a good grasp of where Naomi was coming from and where she'd like to take her new company.

Prior to our meeting, I asked Naomi to fill out a questionnaire to help us both draw focus on what she was wanting out of a website, what it should look like, feel like and what it should contain, as well what in her mind was the optimal way of working together on it.

Check out the scanned questionnaire forms below:

I'm going to need to sit down and have another good read over them & start sketching out some notes & ideas..

But before I go, here's a quick off-the-cuff list of observations about the job:

• Two Thumbs Up is a newly formed company that is looking to launch itself into the marketplace - the website will likely be the central feature of this launch (yeah! and yikes!) 
• Two Thumbs Up is a brand new company that hasn't created any work of its own yet,  so pre-existing materials for website (eg photos, other promo materials etc) are scarce - that means it will most likely be necessary for me to create a number of graphics / illustrations (including a company logo) to supplement written website content on the website.
• From talking with Naomi, the two most unique marketing points that make Two Thumbs Up stand out from the crowd are: 1. the company's personality / unique identity and 2. their unique process (the way they go about their work).  Thus the website will have to resonate these 2 key aspects loud & clear.

I'm going to sleep on it and think more about our meeting and do some more brainstorming tomorrow.. The 'feel' of website is so important for this job and I'm working with a company who has yet to translate their ideas about the company personality / identity into anything visual so it's important for me to be as perceptive as possible, to read between the lines a bit and to get to the essence of what my client is wanting & needing..

But for now...goodnight!