Building a brand and site a solo founder can run himself

A brand system built to match the positioning that was already sharp

I started with the sector, where legal sites tend to fall into two traps: starchy and corporate, or trying so hard to feel modern that they lose credibility. The right register was something else: serious without being stiff, modern without being performative. I studied a small reference set (Align Advisories for the editorial restraint, sule.io for the visual quiet) and used those as the corridor.

The system that came out of it: a monotone palette with a single warm accent, serif headings paired with a clean sans, generous spacing, and a component library built on shadcn primitives. Dark mode set as the default from the start. The existing logo got converted from PNG to SVG with four variants (full mark, icon, wordmark, block) so it could behave properly across contexts.

The tone of voice took as much work as the visual identity. Four attributes (direct, warm, confident, grounded) with practical rules attached: maximum 25 words per sentence on marketing pages, benefit-first phrasing, and scan-friendly structure. I rewrote the founder-supplied copy (six pages of formal brochure language) against those rules. The site reads like a person now, with the brochure register gone.

Imagery was the cut, because forcing something would have undermined the rest

One deliberate absence was imagery, where we explored AI-generated visuals but nothing matched the brand's register. Stock photography was ruled out early because it reads as cheap and generic, especially in professional services where every other site uses the same handshake-in-a-boardroom shot. The founder didn't have images of his own, and rather than force something that would undermine the trust the typography and copy were building, we left it out. Sometimes the best design decision is what you choose not to include.

An enterprise stack underneath, a CMS surface the founder could actually touch

The site is four pages with no nesting, and any page is reachable in one click. Six service areas live as anchor sections on a single Services page, rather than six separate routes. Contact is reachable from every page in two ways: sticky header button and page-level CTA section.

Under the hood sits a stack you'd see on a much larger product, sized to free and near-free tiers. What matters is the surface the founder actually touches: a CMS with custom markdown tags so he can apply visual treatments without writing code.

Shipped in under a week, with ongoing cost in single digits

The site launched with perfect Lighthouse scores across all four categories. The founder edits content directly through Strapi without needing me, and hosting and database costs sit at around £7 a month, plus the domain renewal once a year. The Wix subscriptions he'd been paying for (a two-year Premium plan and a monthly business email add-on) were no longer needed and could be cancelled.

The handover was complete: he owns every account, every credential, every repo. A client-facing guide covers how to edit content, check form submissions, and what not to touch, with a CMS formatting reference as an appendix. The GitHub main branch is protected with rulesets so future contributors can't force-push or bypass pull requests.