Ellen Lighting & Hardware needed a simple, elegant website that reflected the quality and style of their products while clearly communicating the services they provide to their various audiences. The project included a logo redesign, website, and showroom landing page design.
Note: The current live website may have been updated since my original design.
The project began with an onsite meeting where I toured Ellen Lighting’s offices and showroom. This visit helped me understand their operations, their range of lighting and hardware products, and the overall aesthetic of their brand.
I met with the owner and team members to define project goals and learn about their different audiences. Their products embodied a modern, elegant, clean, and luxurious style, qualities that became the foundation for the new brand identity and website.
I mapped out the business and user goals in a Venn diagram to identify overlaps and uncover opportunities to bridge the gaps between them. The primary objective was to position Ellen Lighting & Hardware as a trusted B2B partner that builds strong relationships with residential and multifamily developers, contractors, and designers. Shared goals centered around professionalism, quality, experience, and trust.
I reviewed other lighting and hardware suppliers to understand how they presented their products and addressed various customer types. This helped identify opportunities for Ellen Lighting to stand out with simpler navigation, stronger storytelling, and a relationship-first approach to their content and design.
Based on interviews and research, I developed personas representing Ellen Lighting’s key audiences. These personas helped guide design decisions and ensure the site met real user needs.
I created a sitemap to define the pages and their hierarchy. The structure emphasized Ellen Lighting & Hardware’s capabilities and project partnerships, offering clear pathways for users to explore services, view portfolio projects, access the catalog, and connect directly with the team.
I designed task flows to visualize how a user would move through the site, focusing on clear, linear journeys that guide them to their goals. These flows illustrated how users would:
By mapping straightforward, task-specific paths, I was able to streamline complex interactions, reduce user effort, and ensure each journey felt intuitive and efficient.
As part of the project, I redesigned Ellen Lighting & Hardware’s logo to better reflect the brand’s timeless and refined aesthetic. The goal was to create a classy, simple design that is representative of their lighting and hardware products.
Several logo directions were developed, from minimalist typography to more lighting-inspired designs. These iterations helped refine the visual identity toward a sophisticated mark that complements the brand’s positioning.
The selected mark balances simplicity and sophistication while subtly symbolizing lighting, representing Ellen Lighting & Hardware’s focus on quality, design, and professionalism.
I started with sketching out the layout to quickly visualize the basic framework and overall content.
Some of my rough sketched-out pages.
Next, I created mid-fidelity wireframes to shape the layout and page hierarchy. This step helped me organize the content and think through how users would move through the site.
The homepage was designed to guide different audiences toward exploring Ellen Lighting & Hardware’s services within their sector. This makes it easy for visitors to see what Ellen Lighting & Hardware offers and immediately identify where they fit and explore Ellen’s expertise and project experience in that area.
A minimal hamburger menu maintains the clean aesthetic while giving users access to additional pages.
Each sector page features an overview of Ellen’s expertise, followed by curated portfolio projects and a contact form for quick inquiries.
A photo-rich portfolio highlights Ellen’s partnerships and projects, with filters allowing users to explore by sector.
While Ellen didn’t want to redesign their e-commerce site, they wanted a landing page that connects visitors to it. I designed this page to highlight key product categories, giving users a clear sense of Ellen’s offerings and linking directly to the corresponding catalog pages.
