Dawson Design

Complete the set

dawsondesign — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 14:49:22 +0000

We have completed the set for Affirmative introducing “the beginners guide to Bridging finance” brochures and flyers.

A Beginners Guide

dawsondesign — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 12:01:12 +0000

We have an office full of “A beginners guide to Development Finance” brochures ready for collection today for Affirmative Finance.

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ARRAS Restaurant

dawsondesign — Sat, 18 Jul 2020 09:39:39 +0000

Interior design and remodelling of ArrasRestaurant is now all complete and open for business, a complete renovation and new lease of life for the old coach house on Peasholme Green in York.

Working closely with Basefit interiors, Dawson Design designed and oversaw the complete renovation of the new 60 cover modern British restaurant.

A quick thank you to Curiousa & Curiousa for supplying the beautiful handblown glass pendants lights over the bar area.

Creating ARRAS restaurant

dawsondesign — Sun, 05 Jul 2020 09:50:02 +0000

Great new project for us, looking at the interior design and remodelling of an old Italian restaurant in York, into a modern British restaurant for Adam Humphrey ArrasRestaurant.

Hot off the press

dawsondesign — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 15:01:33 +0000

Hot off the press the new Coatings & Polymers corporate narrative ready for their sales conference next week.

Celebrating 30 years of great ideas

dawsondesign — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 16:32:08 +0000

Another successful CPHI show

dawsondesign — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 14:13:36 +0000

We are just back from Barcelona, another successful ‪CPHI stand for #Croda Healthcare completed, the new stand had some fantastic feedback from the client and their customers.

Another successful Vitafoods show

dawsondesign — Mon, 16 May 2016 14:28:25 +0000

We are just back from Geneva, another successful ‪#‎vitafoods‬ stand for incromega ‪#‎Puremax‬ ‪#‎Croda‬ completed, the stand is still looking good along with our product box designs.

Be Skinspired at Incosmetics Paris

dawsondesign — Mon, 16 May 2016 14:10:55 +0000

New look Be Skinspired stand at ‪#‎incosmetics‬ 2016 for Croda, all the hard work paid off, from design, project management, logistics, installation and finally great client feedback.

Eight reasons the new National Trust website is funkier than yours

dawsondesign — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:30:37 +0000

Here are some cool bits from its new responsive website.

Ghost buttons…

Lovely stuff. Ghost buttons are becoming more and more common.

This nice bit of CSS helps every call to action look a little more elegant and means they don’t have to detract as much from content.

…including the best call to action ever written

There’s nothing more to say about this, other than it’s not a euphemism, and you can click through below if you’d like to go.

Colour and contrast

The National Trust is about cultural heritage, but a shorthand for that is beauty.

So, it’s very pleasing that the new Trust website has such bold colouring and contrast throughout. It really does improve the experience.

Below is a selection of elements that stood out.

A long-arsed membership landing page

I can’t capture the page in full, but go and check it out for yourself. It’s a long, persuasive and content-filled page intent on increasing memberships.

Not only is it visually stunning but it caters for a number of different personas, includes seasonal detail, testimonials, FAQs and editorial (’10 reasons a National Trust membership might change your life’).

Here are three of my favourite bits…

First person stories

Who can sell your wedding venues better than the happy bride and groom?

This is great marketing, not to mention delicious typography.

The faceless testimonials shown above on the membership page are nicely presented (where the product is worth around £100), but when the service on offer is a few orders of magnitude more expensive, and part of the ‘best day of your life’, something more persuasive is called for.

Superbly inclusive copywriting (and the second best ever call to action)

The National Trust relies on donations, volunteers and a massive amount of good will.

Creating a website that represents the open face of the organisation starts with copywriting.

This screenshot uses decetively simply copy, all very much in an active and friendly voice.

Chunky search

The search facility is really fun to use, thanks to its prominence just below the fold on the homepage, use of a chunky text field, auto-suggest and beautiful results pages.

No doubt a more prominent search bar will give the National Trust another source of data to assess regional interest in the organisation.

A fantastic jobs website

There’s a new jobs website, too, on another domain.

It’s just as enjoyable. In the new world of talent shortage, changing company culture,transparent organisations and innovation labs, the National Trust jobs website is as good as any I’ve seen at setting the right tone.