Role Product Designer, Brand Designer
Format One-week design sprint · 2026
Platform Squarespace
Live susteed.com

What I owned
Discovery and scope · website brief · logo and brand foundation · visual direction · AI-generated hero video · full Squarespace build and handoff

01 · The challenge

The client's problem wasn't execution. It was scope.

They arrived with many directions and no clear website — plenty of ideas about what Susteed could say, no agreement on what the site needed to do. With a sprint timeline, the real risk was spending it building the wrong thing well.

02 · Approach

Deciding with the client, not for them. I led discovery conversations to name the site's actual job: communicate credibility, present services clearly, make it easy for a potential client to get in touch. Everything that didn't serve those three things got cut.

That narrowed to a single-page structure — Home, Services, About, Contact — and cleared the way to move fast. I wrote the brief so the decision was documented, not just agreed in a room.

Brand foundation. Logo, colour palette, typography and a visual direction built around sustainability, maturity and trust. For the hero, I produced an AI-generated video to give the site a distinct, polished feel without a production budget.

Platform as a product decision. The client wanted to manage copy and images independently after launch. That made Squarespace the right call over a custom build — a decision about their capability, not my preference. I handled template customisation, domain and hosting configuration, and site structure so they could take ownership on day one.

03 · Result

A simple, elegant landing page that communicates trust, seniority and sustainability expertise — launched within the sprint, and fully editable by the client without me.

Takeaways

Knowing what to cut is the deliverable. With a sprint timeline, scope decisions mattered more than craft decisions.

Advocate for the decision, then document it. Writing the brief turned a conversation into something the client could hold me to — and me them.

Design for who maintains it. The best build is the one the client can still update in six months without calling me.

Skills: Scope definition · Client workshops · Brief writing · Brand design · Logo design · Visual direction · UX/UI · Information architecture · Copywriting · AI video · Squarespace · Sustainability communication · Client communication · Independent handoff