The problem
A brand-new studio has no client work to point to. The site had to earn trust through craft and honesty instead of a portfolio — no invented case studies, no stock mockups pretending to be real projects.
Portfolio
Webloom Studio — our own first project
Before taking on client work, we built the studio itself: the identity in use, the website you're reading, and the installable app behind it. Here's the brief we wrote and the timeline we actually worked to.
- Client
- Webloom Studio (self-initiated)
- Location
- Sydney, NSW
- Scope
- Brand application, website, installable app
- Status
- Live and in active development
The brief
The audience
Sydney founders and small businesses commissioning their first serious website, identity or app. They want taste and clarity, not jargon or a template.
The direction
Editorial and quiet. Deep chocolate as the ground, warm beige as the page, muted rose as the single accent. Cormorant Garamond for headings, Jost for everything else. Generous space, hairline rules, no gradients.
The constraint
Every page had to work first on a phone held one-handed, and the whole thing had to be installable to a home screen as a real app — not just a bookmark.
Design system
Palette
- ChocolateGrounding sections, headers
- Warm beigePage surface
- Muted roseSingle accent, links
- CardPanels and cards
Typography
Headings
Cormorant Garamond
Light weight, generous leading, italics for emphasis.
Body & labels
Jost
Wide letter-spaced uppercase for eyebrows and buttons.
Timeline
Week 1
Discovery & brief
- Defined the offer: websites, branding, apps
- Wrote the positioning and tone of voice
- Agreed the honesty rule — nothing shown that hasn't been made
Week 2
Identity & design system
- Applied the Webloom wordmark across header, footer and icons
- Built the colour, type and spacing tokens
- Set the page architecture: Home, Services, Portfolio, About, Contact
Week 3
Build & responsive pass
- Built every page mobile-first with a bottom tab bar
- Stripped all placeholder imagery in favour of typographic panels
- Search titles, descriptions and social cards written per page
Week 4
App layer & enquiries
- Installable app manifest and home-screen icons from the logo
- Contact form wired to a real database, not a fake success message
- Private studio inbox behind sign-in to read and manage enquiries
Next
Ongoing
- Email notifications for new enquiries once a sending domain is connected
- First client case study published on this page's sibling
- Performance and accessibility audit before the next release