Lost Republic
Art Direction | Web Design
Lost Republic Distilling Co. reached out to our team at GoDaddy because they needed help with their site. They weren’t happy with how their current WordPress site was performing, so we seized the opportunity to help them. Lost Republic was founded by Colin Harter and Matthew Weese in 2013. The two had a vision of creating California’s craft whiskey and the spirit that goes with it.
My role as the visual designer was to build a site that fulfilled their needs as a company. The rebuild’s focus was to create a mobile-friendly design, modern approach, and combine their e-commerce on their website directly (they were using Shopify).
Project Brief
Before we started the design process, we met with the team Lost Republic team on a Zoom call to understand what changes they were looking to make. Our little team included Jillian Johnson (Sr. Marketing Manager), Derek Powell (Marketing Manager), Brandon Baxter (GoDaddy Guide), and myself, as their visual designer.
Brand Refresh
Lost Republic’s Whiskey label designs are unique and beautifully constructed. It wasn’t hard to be inspired by their company. The first stage of the process was to create a wireframe to share with the Lost Republic team before we sent the designs for development. I built out both mobile and desktop wireframes through Sketch.
Their old website lacked personality and color. To brighten up the new site’s vibe incorporating Lost Republic’s bold colors throughout the site to compliment the taupe primary color palette. I focused on creating the mobile design to shift seamlessly throughout all platforms from Desktop, Tablet to Mobile.
Responsive Site
After the client approved the wireframe, we sent it off for web development. Production took a little over two months, and now the site is live. The development process didn’t go as smoothly as we had hoped. Although the client was happy, I felt that the final site’s execution didn’t measure up to the wireframe we had provided the client.
What did I learn from this process? Sometimes you don’t get the final product you were hoping for even if the team does everything right. I’m still learning, but even though this project didn’t turn out how I had anticipated, I still see it as a win.
Team Credits:
Jillian Johnson (Sr. Marketing Manager), Derek Powell (Marketing Manager), Brandon Baxter (GoDaddy Guide) and outsourced website development.
