Redesigning The Studio Website
Building a new website for clients is a labor of love. Building a new website for your studio,…well, it’s a labor!
Since our website launched back in March, we’ve been heads down on new projects and talking to new prospects. However, we felt particularly compelled to write this article about the new site because of our newest ace-in-the-hole for custom CSS and Javascript for even more customized websites on Squarespace.
The Beginning
Before our migration back to Squarespace, our 2019 studio website was built on WordPress using ACF (Advanced Custom Forms). We initially liked this because we were able to leverage custom hover and on-scroll interactions and different layout grids, which ultimately gave the work a “massive” feel. During the two years we had this site, we made a few observations:
Updates to the site UI & Q/A required more development intervention
Content updates took too many steps within the Wordpress back-end
Our brand got boring over time (if you missed our rebrand article, check it out here!)
As we were wrapping up our new rebrand, our thoughts naturally gravitated towards the website and how we would bring the brand to life there. Aside from creating a website that allowed for more of our brand personality to come to the surface, we wanted something more streamlined that was easy to update and customize on the fly.
Squarespace, Meet SquareKicker
Now, I’d be lying to you if I told you we weren't apprehensive about going back to Squarespace. Even though Squarespace 7.1’s “blocks” approach was very cool and we’ve had tons of experience building great websites with it, the biggest reason we had cold feet about it was the lack of real customization. Even with 7.1, most Squarespace sites looked very “templated” and lacked real uniqueness.
However, during one of many dumpster-dives into YouTube tutorials, we came across an amazing tool that allows for full customization and animation of Squarespace’s blocks, using clean, compliant CSS and Javascript. This tool allows users to customize their website with custom hover states, menu overlays, on-scroll animations, and so much more at every possible viewport. Full creativity and control without any of the code.
I’m talking, of course, about the wonderful folks at SquareKicker.
With SquareKicker, many of our “template-trap” worries about Squarespace were just about eliminated. Once we created the new site, populated it with brand styles, and created the page architecture, we installed SquareKicker with its one-step plug-in code into the header. From there, the rest was magic. Within two months of content migration & rewrites, as well as a couple of new case studies and just playing around with the SquareKicker features, the website was completed.
We couldn’t have gone through this new website revamp without harnessing the new power of SquareKicker. With even more customization power at our fingertips, it’s an amazingly happy marriage with the reasons why we still love Squarespace as a website solution. We have since incorporated SquareKicker into our Squarespace website design processes, and we’re looking forward to making more cool experiences with it.
