This month I had a fabulous idea.

I wanted to start a monthly ‘Fake Client Challenge’.

It boiled down to this: I needed more clients.

After not achieving my goal 3 clients before Christmas (in my first month in business), I realised something important that seems obvious in hindsight: My potential clients didn’t know what it was like to work with me.

Thus, the Fake Client Project is born.

---

The Fake Client Project

The plan is simple: Each month, my Instagram Followers will help me choose a made-up business to create a basic brand + website for.

I will work on the project for 1 month in which time I will:

• Create a basic mood board and colour palette
• Create a Logo
• Mock-up a website Home Page Wireframe
• Make time among my actual client work to consistently create fake client projects for the remainder of this year
• Explain to my audience the missing steps that would happen during a real project (eg. strategy, competitor analysis, revisions etc. )
• Ask Feedback from my audience who are my effective ‘client’ for each project.
• Show Behind the scenes
• Take constructive criticism, in the public eye of my social media page.

First Fake Client: A Vegan Cafe Website + Brand

The Brief:

I decided to take to social media to explain what I was doing and invite my audience to contribute. I used Pinterest Boards to come up with 2 different directions my ‘brand’ could go. Using my client questionnaires, I showed what difference a simple word could have to change the look and feel of the brand. My followers had the final say:

• Cool/Young
• Sustainable
• Fun!

One of my lovely followers also suggested the name ‘The Vegan Drip’ which I loved!

For reference, I showed the two different vibes that the descriptive words represented. To the left, you can see the ‘contemporary’ option while on the right is the ‘fun’ version.

The Logo:

For the logo, I envisioned something that would look good printed onto a colourful re-usable coffee cup, on brown paper bags and for decorative signage around the cafe – maybe neon!?

Basically, whatever I chose, had to be adaptable for different uses.

The finished product looked like this:

I also created a fun custom Pattern that I thought would be a good addition to the branding to tie everything in together!

The Cafe Website:

Because websites take a lot to build, I decided to build just the home page in Adobe XD rather than Showit. This way my followers could see my train of thought on the project, without taking too long to create.

Unfortunately, this means I’m not able to link a live preview to the site. Nevermind!

For this Cafe Website project, I decided to place the menu on the main page. Isn’t that why most people visit a cafe website? Well, it is for me, anyway.

Additional Comments:

Like I said earlier, the Fake Client Process skims over some massive, important parts of the creative client process: Strategy, Analysis, Revisions, Feedback.

In reality, a menu on the home page might not be practical. But to show what could be possible, and to show off more design choices, that is what I have done.

Conclusion + April Project

How do you like it? If you were my client, what feedback would you give to me?

You can check out my next month’s Fake Client Pinterest Moodboard here

Don’t forget to follow along on my Instagram Account to follow along and contribute to my projects! @madisonrammdesign

If you are interested in working with me, make sure you send me a message here