40+ businesses, and no brand at all
Vedara Ventures holds more than 40 businesses across commercial automotive, hospitality, retail, and real estate. At that scale, they had no logo, no brand guidelines, and no website, and Q3 investor conferences were weeks away. I had eight weeks to build both the identity and the site.
Constraints: 8 weeks and a $7.5K budget.
Four decisions that made 8 weeks enough
Brand first, then web
Every web decision derives from a brand decision, which gets messy when none have been made yet. I gave the brand the first two weeks and the site the remaining six, and it paid off: with the visual system locked, the site sprint never stalled on “what color is this button?” The investor deadline helped too. The client approved the brand in 5 days because they had a date to hit.
One mark for five industries
The identity had to look at home on a commercial truck lot and a boutique hotel’s website. I designed a nested-V monogram with an architectural feel, so it reads as structure and stability rather than any single industry. The palette landed on plum and dusty khaki, but only after one wrong turn (see below).
A site that expands without a developer
Vedara would keep acquiring businesses, so they needed a site they could maintain quickly and easily. At the client’s request, I built a custom back end on WordPress, with Bricks Builder for page templates and Advanced Custom Fields. A headless build would have been faster but harder for a non-technical team to run. Their first two additions took 3–5 minutes each, with no training.
Speed as a credibility signal
Investors judge an operator by details, and a slow site is a detail. I lazy-loaded compressed images, inlined critical CSS, and loaded each page’s scripts only where they were needed. At launch, the site loaded in 1.9s in GTmetrix and scored 94 for performance and 99 for accessibility in Lighthouse.
What didn’t work
My first palette used navy and off-white, but a holding company spanning hotels and truck dealerships needed warmth as well as trust. After some discussion with the client, we settled on plum and dusty khaki.
Results
What shipped: a complete identity (nested-V logo suite, five-color palette, brand book) and a filterable portfolio website, on time and on budget.
| 1.9s load time | 12 of 12 testers | 3–5 minutes |
|---|---|---|
| GTmetrix at launch | Found and filtered a business | To add a new company, no training |
| Measure | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Find / filter a business | 12 of 12 testers | Remote usability test (Hotjar, n=12) |
| Correct first click in navigation | 10 of 12 | Same test |
| Used industry filters before being asked | 67% (8 of 12) | Same test |
| Page load time | 1.9s | GTmetrix at launch |
| Lighthouse | 94 performance, 99 accessibility | Lighthouse (lab) |
| Adding a new company | 3–5 minutes, no training | Client, first two additions |
Takeaways
The agency fully transitioned me to a new project at day 60, which is why my data stops there. With more time, I would’ve liked to build the client a custom HubSpot analytics dashboard tracking requests, close rate, and lead source, split by channel.