THE CLIENT

Newmanor Law prides itself on delivering a bold new style of legal and business advice for lenders, landlords, occupiers and developers in the real estate and real estate finance world.

The firm takes a different approach to fees, communication, technology and client relations, and has built a brand for itself that breaks away from the traditional law firm mould.

THE PROJECT

As it neared its 4th anniversary, Newmanor Law wanted to review its website so that it would more aptly represent the firm’s strong values and forward-thinking approach.

The brief was to create a more visual, succinct, interactive and engaging online space incorporating Newmanor’s existing corporate colour palette of black and gold.

Building on the brand, rather than changing it, the project would seek to improve functionality and bolster visual aesthetics, in order to present potential customers with a professional, informative resource, that accurately sold Newmanor’s USPs without bombarding the reader with swathes of legalese.

THE WORK

Since its initial creation, the Newmanor website had grown organically, but with this expansion in content, some definition had been lost as the design had taken a backseat. Whilst the content was well executed and informative, the layout made it challenging to read, with big blocks of text and minimal imagery impeding the user experience.

WorkPR’s graphic design and web team undertook a review of the pages from an aesthetic perspective, developing a new visual style that would better reflect Newmanor’s core values and legal specialisms, but without deviating from the black and gold colour pallet.

The new design included a series of architectural sketches as the primary images on the website. These were created in a ‘hand-drawn’ style to differentiate from most law firms that use photos of people and represent a more hands-on approach. This style also allowed the flexibility to show the types of buildings and businesses that Newmanor deal with. The new images broke up the copy-heavy pages and added consistency across the site, whilst an animated sketch on the homepage added some fluidity and movement to the landing page. From this style, we also created ‘hand-drawn’ icons to create a consistent brand.

The content was assessed from an SEO perspective and edited to reflect the appropriate keywords. Boxes and accordions were utilised to ensure that the word count did not impact the aesthetics, but would still rank with Google and deliver the appropriate information. This also boosted the interactive nature of the layout, making it much more engaging and simple to search.

After the initial redesign was completed on a staging site, a collaborative working group was set up with key decision makers at Newmanor, and together the team worked through each area of the website to ensure it delivered on the brief, making suggestions and tweaks to improve the overall functionality and UX.

THE RESULTS

The new website launched on Thursday 13th October 2022 to coincide with the firm’s Anniversary celebration that same day, welcoming in its fifth year of business with a renewed vigour and focus on promoting its services online.