Faraj Defence Lawyers came to us prior to opening and we helped them go from an overlooked lawyer, to being a highly regarded law firm that allowed gained overnight success
Ahmad Faraj contacted us when he felt he was ready to go out on his own and begin building the company, and the life he wanted to lead. Working previously in one of Sydneys leading Criminal Defence Firms, our clients felt he was ready to break away and create Faraj Defence Lawyers. Being their first business our client was unsure as to what his future was to hold, how to go about operating on their own, as well as what their brand was to look like.
Over the course of 3 months, endless meetings, and a range of design concepts, we helped our client build Faraj Defence Lawyers.
Our client upon consultation was unsure of what their brand was to look like. Curbside since opening has always designed three concepts for our clients ensuring we create:
When pushing these three ideas, our client discovered that his vision from his previous companies competitors had been coloured. A coloured perception is when we find our clients so heavily influenced by what is already in the market and in specific, their current competitive landscape, or familiar brands within the industry. We helped him venture out in to the different ideas and concepts to which we landed on a monochromatic appeal, understanding that we needed to somehow create hierarchy when displaying their content as it was intended to be extremely text heavy.
Our client enjoyed the idea of a traditional monograph that they could use on their business cards, letterheads, and social profiles. Although the original influence came from traditional firms with various ways the letters F and D could be used interconnecting using Didot, we had a different image for our client.
We wanted to use a sans serif typeface that was modern, strong, and timeless. We developed an icon that incorporated the two and felt modern enough to hold its space in the market, however traditional enough to be respected in the industry. We avoided contemporary shapes, a variation in type weights and created a mark our client was ecstatic with. As our client requested for a full branding profile, we created a suite of logos that worked in landscape, portrait, and square, with a range of options allowing their brand to speak for itself on any platform, digital or analogue.
Working with a monochromatic colour palette is something we never enjoy as a studio. As easy as it is to make things look great, it’s never easy to make something translate clearly to our clients. However; when done effectively, it can be quite eloquent and well received.
Working with a law firm, we had preconceived notions that a large part of their projects would be content heavy and need to be highly readable by their audience. With large bodies of copy, multiple headings, and little to no imagery we wanted to create a system where their viewers would be able to identify easily what they were after and turn a 10 minute website view, in to a client for Faraj Defence Lawyers.
Along the way we faced many challenges and like many clients we worked with, had to show FDL why what they wanted; wouldn’t work. Integrating a secondary colour palette away from light, cool, and dark greys, we pushed them to include a hue of blue, and a fluorescent yellow. Although minimal, we made sure it took up no more than 10% of the space and was only used when absolutely necessary. This made the contents of their website easy to consume and made a heavy piece of text, feel a lot lighter and more inviting.
We also worked with the client on creating a visual brand on the types of images we felt they should be promoting in order to stay in tune with the brand that we had built for them. Using blurred images, that included blues, grey and earth tones, allowed for the clients brand to seem succinct and kept the aesthetic across their social media platforms, website, and blogs.
On the initial consultation with Faraj Defence Lawyers, we knew we had our work cut out for us, however, we weren’t too sure they did. Building initial concepts for our client, we as a studio worked with them to fulfill what they felt worked, and what we knew they needed. Many battles were had regarding layout, content, and the overall user experience of the website and although we went in publishing a website we didn’t feel serviced our client the best we could, we didn’t give up
After publishing the first rendition of the website, it wasn’t long until our client understood some of the concepts we initially pitched. Curbside being consumers of local and international content across the web, we understood practices that would reduce the size of our clients website as well as how we could use off screen real estate to communicate with our clients audience.
FDL also along the way decided to recruit externally a number of SEO specialists, to which we advised may not have their best interest at heart based off of their practices and it was soon that FLD understood this also. Eventually they came across Bleument who we found to be one of the best companies that FDL could have engaged with that would assist in retrieving the results they needed as a company. Bleument assisted with their sites SEO’s, the type of content they needed to produce and specific wording that better their Google Ranking. Working along side Andy and Bleument was a joy, and brought the best out of all three parties, Curbside, FDL, and Bleument.
Throughout the project we faced many challenges and were indeed, challenged by our client, however we found over time, although difficult, we found many compromises with us explaining to our client why we made the decisions we made, as well as amalgamating the ideas he had, and creating something that not only appealed to him but would also be effective to his audience.
Since onboarding the client we have continued working with them, offering our retainer services assisting with the upkeep of their website and their brand. We’ve continued assisting with troubleshooting items for them as well as making minor amendments and optimising their website's user experience and working off of the analytics we’ve integrated into their website to ensure they receive the best return on investment as possible. As the brand grows, it has seen the employment of staff members who we’ve had the pleasure of shooting and working with, ensuring only the best content is published from their platforms.
We continually invest time in understanding contemporary trends that are used acorss a range of design diciplines including art, music, fashion, and architecture.
