Casi Hall
Casi Hall is the talent behind Casi Hall Creative and her new studio imprint, Omie Oh My!
When I say “talent,” boy do I mean it.
Casi is a photographer with a rare talent for seeing you exactly as you are and bringing out the best in you. She’s the only one I trust with my brand! When I launched my business in 2020, she designed my logo and did my very first brand photo shoot. Fast forward five years and she recently updated my brand photo shoot and knocked it out of the park. Today, she’s doing brand photography for small businesses, event photography for people and nonprofits, and family photography.
But that’s not all—not by a long shot. Casi’s also an accomplished artist who can work in just about any medium. She’s selling her original art and handcrafted fabric and wallpaper designs. She offers wholesale options to local businesses. And she’s selling prints of her art, too.
She was getting by with a Carrd profile—an ultra-simple list of buttons linking to the various places where customers could find her artwork. But the Carrd site didn’t provide visitors with any context about her art and it didn’t give people information about her photography packages. She needed more.
When Casi came to me, it was with the hope that I could build her a simple, one-page website that would show off her new brand, spotlight her art, and make it easy for people to hire her as their photographer.
Done and done! You already know I love working with women business owners, but this one was extra-special. Casi’s a dear friend, and I really want the world to know how incredible she is. Keep reading to see how it all came together!
The web design process
Casi’s career as a professional graphic designer came in handy on this one. Not only did she come prepared with a cute logo and a gorgeous font and color palette, she also whipped up some brand-aligned background patterns that I could use.
As for photos? That was easy, too. A friend of hers had recently done a brand photo shoot with her and the photos were utter perfection. I mean, Casi’s cute to start with, but when you add in a baby and her designs, you go straight into “over-the-top adorable” territory.
Because Casi’s a visual person, we started with an ultra-basic wireframe design. Over chai lattes one afternoon, we hemmed and hawed and tweaked and adjusted. From there, I put the wireframe into my editing system so Casi could quickly and easily drop comments with the wording and photos she wanted in specific spots.
From there, it was time for design—my favorite part!
I selectively chose her site’s base colors from her brand color palette, relying on white, cream, and pink to keep the site’s overall look bright and fun. Then, I paired secondary colors from her brand with Squarespace’s new shape block to add a bit of whimsy to the design. Squarespace’s new section divider designs made it easy to bring in the “scalloped edge” look from her logo, which I replicated throughout the site for a bit of fun brand alignment.
Once I had all the pieces in place, I amped up the whimsy with a few subtle CSS effects. Some elements on her site will gently rotate or lift on mouse hover. Because life is short, darling, and you have to have some fun. Right? Right.
My favorite part of Casi’s new site is the main navigation. (Some folks call this the “tabs at the top.”) Her website homepage features a long, one-page scroll. With art and photography being two very distinct parts of her business, I knew it would be important to make sure visitors could find the information most relevant to them. I added some brand-aligned mouse hover effects to the main menu, then paired each link with an anchor on the page. Clicking on a link in the navigation bar scrolls the visitor right down to the section they’re looking for with a nice, smooth animation. Do I love it? Yes I do.
Last but not least, Casi’s website is connected to her MailChimp account so she can collect email addresses and sent out notifications when she’s attending artisan markets and pop-up events in Buffalo and Rochester. Nifty!
As with every website I build, Casi’s was created with the future in mind. Someday soon, she’ll be ready to migrate away from third-party sites like Etsy and start selling her art directly from her website. When the time comes, her website can easily handle e-commerce—without breaking the piggy bank. Sweet.
Take a look at Casi’s new website home page!
