Intuitive Designs - Custom Web Design & Illustration Services

Oh, do we have another fun website design to talk about. Oh, do we. Can you tell by now that I tend to get excited about new client site launches?

I’d like to introduce you to Pomegranate Planning, the new site and business of Barbara Milgram. She has been doing market research for the past 30+ years for clients such as KFC, Apple, Sun Microsystems, Ikea…and the list goes on. I was so excited to take her project on because market research, advertising, and branding fascinates me.

She approached us to do her site design and logo because she was working on rebranding her business, which is an evolution from her business The Milgram Consultancy, which was founded in 1996.  I really love her tagline, “A curiosity based research approach which goes beyond the who, what, when, where, and why to unlock insights that flourish into powerful, energizing, and fruitful business ideas.”. Is that awesome or what?

After learning more about Barbara’s new business philosophy and her thoughts, we decided to first focus on the new business name “Pomegranate Planning” for her logo anagram. Since the name “Pomegranate” has a lot to do with Barbara’s business philosophy as well as being in the name itself, it seemed perfect to focus on pomegranates themselves and take it literally. And, interestingly the first “P” in “Pomegranate” was just begging to be developed into a pomegranate tree. So, that’s what we did! That was Koldo‘s idea, by the way. Because he’s a creative idea machine. I’m not joking about this.

When thinking about which direction to go in design-wise, I started thinking about infographics and the presentation of data. I thought it’d be fun to have an infographic on the website, but perhaps one that didn’t necessarily represent strict numerical data. I talked to Barbara about this and she agreed that it would be a fun idea too although she didn’t want to go in the direction of strict numerical data either. So, that’s what the pomegranate illustration on the home page is. It represents “powerful”, “energizing”, and “fruitful” in a fun conceptual way.

Barbara also mentioned she wanted something very clean and fresh. So, we decided to focus on those two keywords. We also wanted to make sure it looked modern (fresh) and sort of “timeless”. So, I thought the Swiss or International style would suit this perfectly, since it always tends to look clean and modern, no matter how much time passes. Ever noticed how Ikea always looks modern yet much of their design is a lot like it was 30 years ago? Exactly.

So, we decided to work with a general feel of Swiss style although not quite so strict or minimalistic, but still using strong geometric elements and a grid. Perhaps you can see the types of elements and general feel we were going for. Here’s the mood board we came up with for the site before we worked on the home page design itself.

As you can see, we’ve got the colors up at the top, which were already established, some potential typography treatment, stock image inspiration, and then a few other elements I found or made. I thought the pomegranate illustration graphic I found on Flickr was ironic and funny. I mean, how often do you find exactly the type of infographic you’re looking for like that? The little bars graphic on the bottom is from Anton Stankowski, a well known German graphic designer. These are just for the mood board feel. Obviously we didn’t use elements from other people directly on the site.

And what can I say, Barbara was lovely. She entrusted us with taking our ideas and running with them and we think the results turned out really great. We hope you do too!

Go visit the site and check it out!