Canvascroft

The brief was a handful of sites the client liked and a list of what hers had to do. That is a harder starting point than a Figma file, because references disagree with each other — one is admired for its typography, another for how it sells — and a requirements list says what must be possible without saying what any of it looks like. Building straight from either produces a copy of somebody else’s site or a page that satisfies a checklist and nothing more.

I treated the reference sites as a statement of taste rather than a specification: what to take from each was the judgement, and the layout came out of what this studio actually sells, not what the references sell. Every screen then went back against the client’s own list, so the finished site is checkable against the brief she wrote rather than against my reading of it.

• A subscription explained before the gallery — what is included, how requests queue, what turnaround looks like
• Plan checkout on the site, so a convinced visitor can subscribe in the same session
• The work showcase placed as proof of the retainer rather than as the opening argument
• Built in WordPress so the studio can add work and adjust plans without a developer

WordPress, because a studio publishing new work regularly should not need a developer to do it:

• WordPress
• Elementor
• WooCommerce

The studio has a site that explains the subscription before it asks for the booking, and takes that booking directly rather than through an enquiry that has to be chased. Where a reference-led brief usually ends with an argument about whether the result matches what was imagined, this one could be checked line by line against the requirements it started from.