Katherine Hart is an author, speaker and Change Agent who hosts the “Is This All There Is?” podcast.

project goals

Katherine Hart came to me with absolutely zero knowledge about branding or websites, other than the fact that she knew she needed one. She’s got extensive experience as a former National Director of Sales for a large company along with being a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist and having a Masters of Spiritual Psychology.

Clearly she’s got a lifetimes’ worth of wisdom about making bold choices, mastering change, and living life on your own terms, she just didn’t know how to build a website. That’s where I come in!

Katherine’s vision of the website was to provide a professional home base for her brand and podcast before she completes her book and starts shopping for an agent and publisher. She also wants to be able to attract and work with one-on-one coaching clients.

Branding

Katherine didn’t have any existing branding, so it was a blank slate. She’d never even thought about colours and fonts, and it was amazing to watch her gain a ton of clarify about exactly who she was helping and how we could position her viewpoint, podcast, and coaching program as she went through the discovery questionnaire and branding exercises.

At her core, Katherine is a good Southern girl (having grown up in the Carolinas) who likes some traditional designs, but she also has a “tell it like it is” edge. I kept picturing her as the traditional looking Ina Garten (I thought she looked like her from our first video meeting) meets irreverent and hilarious Julia Louis-Dreyfus!

I created a mood board from her inspiration images, and from there came up with the unexpected colour palette featuring a deep merlot and turquoise colours (unexpected) paired with a lovely cream and grounding navy (traditional).

Katherine’s childhood picture with her hands thrown up in a moment of pure joy (bottom right of the mood board) would go on to heavily influence the photoshoot strategy, and it’s also mirrored in her favourite piece of sculpture which you can see on the upper righthand corner of the mood board.

From there we moved onto her fonts and logo, which I wanted to feel more traditional. Katherine has many years of experience and I wanted her to be taken seriously, but also wanted to make sure her fun loving nature wasn’t totally lost.

I chose a serif header font, which always feels more traditional, but one that has some fun styling on the letters A and R. I emphasized this further with some custom styling on her primary logo to enlarge the A and R styling. These also reminded me of pearls, which Katherine loves to wear (again, traditional!).

I also custom styled the capital K and H by stretching and expanding the upper arms which mirrors the reaching for the sky in joy.

These changes are subtle and the average person wouldn’t notice a difference from the original font unless they were side by side, but they were done to infuse the logo with meaning to Katherine.

The logo is classic but doesn’t take itself too seriously, which I feel reflects Katherine’s personality.

PHOTOSHOOT STRATEGY

When we started our project, Katherine had already booked a portrait photographer who was local to her, and I was excited to see what would happen when I provided some direction and strategy and let the experienced photographer work his magic.

Katherine shared the photoshoot strategy video with Andrew and I was nervous that he would feel like I was stepping on his toes, but he said the direction was very helpful (phew!).

I had a very clear vision of outfits and poses that I thought would frame Katherine’s beautiful face, and I even included links to some example outfits she could purchase online if she couldn’t find anything herself.

Here’s a sneak peek at Katherine’s photoshoot strategy:

and here’s a few of Katherine’s amazing photos:

website

After completing the branding and photoshoot strategy we took a 4 week break to give Katherine and Andrew time to complete the photoshoot and edit the images. Then it was time to move onto phase 2 of the project: designing and building the website.

I used the framework of an existing website template and completely customized it for Katherine, resulting in a semi-custom website.

Katherine’s goals for the website were to focus on:

• Having a website that reflects who she is

• The upcoming release of her book

• The “Is This All There Is?” podcast

• Have individuals contact her to work with one-on-one.

Katherine wrote all of her own copy by following a template that I provided her, and then I edited it. With over a decade of experience in selling programs online, I was quickly able to zero in on Katherine’s differentiating factor and help her design a program and write a sales page for one-on-one coaching inquiries.

The majority of the calls-to-action on each page is to “work with me”, which leads to her program information page and for potential clients to complete an inquiry form, after which Katherine can contact them for a discovery call and sell her one-on-one program.

Katherine’s website includes the following pages:

• Home page

• About page

• Podcast page (technically this is a blog but will contain embedded recordings of her podcast episodes)

• Work with me page

• Contact

• Legal

As with all my websites, Katherine’s website is also fully optimized for mobile devices.