From Budapest to Branding
An Update on Our Journey
Relocation, Holidays, and Lessons Learned
Our apologies for our radio silence, as things have been quite busy for us lately. Upon our return from our world trip, there were many tasks that needed our attention. Firstly, Sandrine relocated from her beloved city apartment to a quieter area where a new, modern apartment awaited her. Goodbye to the boiler shower and creaky floors! We spent the following days and weeks unpacking boxes, sorting through unopened letters, meeting up with friends and family, and enjoying the X-Mas 🎄🎅🏻🎁 while sipping on some delicious Glühwein 🍷.
After the holiday break, Sandrine resumed her previous job. The first two weeks went smoothly, but then unexpected challenges arose, resulting in long working hours throughout January 2023. In contrast, Adrian had packed his bags once more and embarked on a five-week sailing ⛵ course in windy Tenerife. Upon our reunion at Zurich airport after five weeks apart, we looked at each other and asked, "So, what's next?" Knowing it was time to tackle our project – so off to work we told each other!
WordPress Woes and Migrating to a New Platform
Before diving deeper into our current process let us describe a recent lapse that happened to us first. One day, Adrian made a mistake that caused quite a bit of trouble. He updated WordPress (our previous blog homepage), but after doing so, he was unable to connect it to the database . Frustrated and unsure of how to fix the issue, he decided to migrate the blog to our website instead. Nonetheless, this was a complex undertaking that necessitated establishing the webserver, readying the website for the internet, and safeguarding it from potential security breaches. Despite the time-consuming nature of this process, it was an essential step, as it now allows us to effortlessly launch updated versions of the website. Regardless the initial setback, this experience taught us the importance of being prepared for unexpected challenges and finding creative solutions to overcome them 😉.
The lapse had another positive side effect. Sandrine is quite happy that she doesn't have to write and layout further blogposts via WordPress anymore. In her opinion, WordPress is anything but fun to use. It's not user-friendly or practical at all. So, what's the lesson here? Sometimes, mistakes can actually lead to positive outcomes 😁
Since our lapse more days and weeks have passed and we thought let’s take another little trip together. This time we visited Adrian’s second home town Budapest. Besides visiting Adrian’s family and the city, eating lots of delicious food such as Gulas soup, Lecsó, Palacsinta while drinking Pálinka and Tokaji, we also spent many hours in all those cute little cafés. Reason enough to take some time for our project and which location would be more suitable than working in a cute and chic pastry café surrounded by a wonderful smell of fresh coffee and cakes!?
Developing a Logo and Color Concept for Our Brand
Now, let's talk about where we are in the process. Besides writing our next blog post, we are still busy and in the process of developing a logo for our brand. Adrian and Sandrine have drafted numerous design possibilities and have managed to narrow down our proposals to four. However, despite our efforts, we still cannot agree on a logo. The logo creation process has proven to be just as challenging as the task of selecting a name for our brand. Remember that story? Let's call it a "Deja Vu" 😅. We've invested a considerable amount of time and effort into brainstorming different ideas, but we've come to realize that we need to devote more time to fully explore our options in the hopes of ultimately finding a logo that we both are passionate about. But, to be fair it is not the top priority.
Whats up next... Text Composition and Help Texts for the User Interface
In addition to the logo development, we are still busy with other topics. On the one hand, we have to think about our color concept and on the other hand in how to produce short and crispy help texts for our users. When designing a user interface, creating a cohesive color concept is crucial for usability. Colors not only add visual appeal to a website, but they also direct the user's attention. They can create a mood, generate contrast, evoke emotions, or call a user to take action - for example, booking a dinner with a host. It's important to consider the physiological characteristics of colors and use them intentionally. We not only have to decide on our primary and secondary colors, no but also think of which colors to use for error messages, info texts, call-to-action buttons, so called feedback colors.
In addition to colors, playing with various contrasts also plays a crucial role. Contrast can be represented through form, color, or size. They can create a sense of visual hierarchy or present content in a structured way on a website. Thanks to contrasts, a user can also see for example, on which parts of the website he needs to focus or they can help him to distinguish between different parts of a website more effectively. Thus, colors and contrasts have an important function and provide users with different information.
Aside from color concepts, we also need to consider the text composition of our homepage. After all, users should always know which page they are on and what information to enter in the corresponding text field. For example, creating a password with certain criteria, selecting a menu via a drop-down, or interpreting an error message correctly. Each text field requires a corresponding brief instruction, which requires a help text. As you can see, there is still much to do. However, after completing these steps, the technical foundation should be laid, and the homepage layout should have progressed enough to release a functional and rudimentary version.
Thank you for taking the time to read our blog post. We'll be back soon with more exciting news!
