Tracy Quinlan is a consulting astrologer in Edmonton, Alberta. She discovered her passion for astrology as a teenager and went on to earn her Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in Sociology and minoring in Psychology, while working as a hairdresser.
Tracy now helps clients around the world navigate through life’s challenges with astrological consultations, classes, and workshops, and speaks at astrological conferences across North America.
Client Goals
- Have a unique visual identity that is easily recognizable and stands out from competitors
- Establish an online presence with a user-friendly website that makes it easy to access services and events
- Introduce a new service: astrology parties for social events
Visual Identity
We started by diving into a bit of history about astrology, and discovered that there is no shortage of symbols and imagery that are associated with the field! The sky, stars, moon, astrological signs, birth charts… the study of astrology is full of imagery, which gave us many options when creating logo concepts.
There were two frontrunners from the concepts we presented: one was an icon based on the shapes created by a birth chart, and the other was an icon composed of an arrow and a star.
Tracy had a tough time deciding between the two, but in the end she chose the arrow/star combination, as this icon symbolizes her clients finding direction from her readings. The arrow points up and to the right, which denotes forward movement, and how Tracy’s readings can help a client move forward during difficult times — something which is very important to her.
The name of Tracy’s business made it natural to use the night sky and the Aurora Borealis as defining visual elements of the Consult the Sky Brand. These natural wonders are composed of many different colours, and we developed a colour palette for the brand based on those found in a “soft night sky”.
Website Design & Development
Tracy was lined up to attend events and conferences while we were developing her website, so we created a temporary landing page that matched her new brand. The page featured a contact CTA so that Tracy wouldn’t miss any possible leads to her website while it was under construction.
We reviewed existing astrological consultancy websites to see what information and services they provided, and what things they often missed. This helped us identify areas where Consult the Sky could set itself apart, and streamlined the process of creating the blueprint for the site that determined exactly what pages were needed and what content had to be written. Because Tracy was writing her own content, we provided direction as to what the most pertinent information for each page was so that she had a clear starting point to work from.
The site needed to handle bookings and payment for the classes and workshops that Consult the Sky offered. We chose the WooCommerce plugin to handle payments. We wanted Tracy to be able to update the website easily as needed, so we built it on WordPress to give her this ability.
The design focused on drawing attention to the CTAs, as the main point of the site is for users to be encouraged to either a) book a consultation, b) purchase tickets to an event or workshop, or c) contact Consult the Sky for more information. Different colours were applied to each CTA block, while liberal amounts of white space were used around the main body content to not only make it easy to read, but to help the CTAs stand out even more.
Launch Time
As a unique element to this project, Tracy did an astrology chart for the launch of the website and determined the best time for her to launch would be November 24th at exactly 10:04am. Launching a website at an exact time is a bit of a challenge — sometimes the internet takes a while to catch up with you — but we officially pushed the site live at this time!
Reflections
At the start of this project Tracy’s knowledge of the design process was limited. She arrived at our initial meeting with a handful of websites that she liked and examples of other astrologer brands. She knew what she liked, and what she didn’t, but was unsure what she wanted for her own brand. By diving into the astrology world, and doing extensive research, we were able to guide Tracy through the process and it was very rewarding to have her end up with a logo and website that both she and her clients love.
For this project we worked with a freelance web developer. Since the launch of this site we have added two in-house developers to our team. Tammy and AJ work closely with designers Emma and Sarah to launch custom-designed websites for our clients.
Results
The visual identity we created for Consult the Sky is warm and inviting. The striking Northern Lights imagery and the overall minimal style of the brand sets it apart from the competition. The new website is easy to navigate, and users can easily book appointments online — another point of difference as most competitors have not upgraded their websites!