DOSE Creative Studio: Framer Website and CMS

Summary

Julie Matthews founded DOSE Creative Studio after creative director roles at agencies. We designed her website in Figma, built it in Framer with a CMS, and handed it over so she can run it herself.

Industry: Creative studio
Services: Website design, Framer build, CMS setup, Handover
How much time: About 5 weeks
Tools: Figma, Framer
Inflection point: A new studio moving from a credentials deck and a Squarespace site to its own website

The problem

Julie had a credentials deck and a Squarespace site. She needed a website that gave her campaign work its proper weight, read like a brand system, and could be updated without a designer.

Most of the proof was film, and some campaigns were never shot as stills. The studio was new, so there were no images for the services section. Julie had rewritten her copy shorter and sharper, then locked it, so the design had to fit the words. She was new to Figma and Framer, and after launch she had to be able to swap an image, change the featured project and add a case study without breaking anything.

One job per review

The brief set four launch pages: Home, Work, About and Contact, with Services folded into Home. When visual comments arrived during wireframes, the round stayed on structure: page order, content order and the right level of detail. Visual ideas were noted for the design stage.

A design system that doubles as brand guidelines

• The logo is built as a swappable component, so a future logo drops straight in

• Three typefaces shown side by side; Julie chose Instrument Sans

• Two background versions settled the palette; Julie chose off-white for the copy-heavy pages

• Films play in place on the page instead of jumping to Vimeo

• Each Work entry follows Julie’s own structure: the problem, what we did, what changed

Build and handover

The first version of Home, Work, About, Contact and a 404, on desktop, tablet and phone, went out after one day of development, followed by a few more days of refinements. Case studies live in the Framer CMS, so content can change without touching layout.

On October 12 Julie received the editable Figma file, a recorded walkthrough of the CMS and domain, and the Framer project in her own workspace. Written notes cover her four editing tasks step by step, and the few rules that keep the site from breaking.

Outcome

The site is live at dosecreativestudio.com, in Julie’s own Framer workspace, about five weeks from acceptance to live. She updates the work herself through the CMS.

What she said

Daniel created the website for my agency and he was absolutely brilliant to work with. He understood exactly what I needed and where my head was at from a design perspective. His work is top level. Highly recommended!

Julie Matthews, DOSE Creative Studio

Credits: Design and Build: Daniel G. Bright, BrightStudios® · DOSE Creative Studio: Julie Matthews