Barrelmaker: Small Batch Code & Creative

Core Disciplines:

• Responsive Web Design
• Responsive Web Development
• HTML/CSS/Typescript
• Eleventy.js + Decap CMS
• Netlify Hosting + Edge Functions
• Logo Design
• Stationary Design

Introduction

Blue Lotus Neuropsychology is a psychology and neuropsychology testing practice located in Evanston, Illinois. Blue Lotus is one of Barrelmaker's full service clients.

Starting At The Beginning

We began working with Blue Lotus Neuropsychology before the practice opened their doors in 2022. Starting with brand consultation, we helped them work through a number of possible name options, including research into similar practices in the Chicagoland area. Once the name was settled on, we begin working through logo design options. Lotus designs are common in the mental and physical health and wellness spaces, so we wanted to work carefully to design something that was instantly recognizable, but didn't feel like a copy of another organization's logo. The final design, with overlapping segments of translucent blues worked to represent the layers of psychological complexity that Blue Lotus specializes in untangling in order to arrive at a diagnosis.

Barrelmaker makes every attempt to cover all bases when designing logos. As can be seen in the slides above, Blue Lotus enjoys logo versions that work on both light and dark backgrounds in both color and grayscale.

Website Version 1

Barrelmaker offers full service design and development on the Squarespace platform, so we started there to get it to market quickly. The design was similar to the current design, but due to the page-by-page nature of Squarespace's system it lacked cohesion. Iteration can be done quickly, but without careful attention to detail, page designs can quickly spiral out of control. Further, the functional capabilities that Squarespace offers can get expensive quickly with little understanding by the client what exactly they are paying extra for. We moved quickly to sunset the Squarespace site as soon as the custom site was complete.

Website Version 2

The current version of the Blue Lotus website is built with a server-side page generation tool called Eleventy using Decap CMS for content management. The site is fully editable by the Blue Lotus staff with the benefit of reliable structured templates. With full code control we are able to make design changes very quickly without having to fight the quirks of a general purpose system. By hosting on Netlify, hosting costs are kept to a minimum while Blue Lotus enjoys virtually unlimited ability to implement custom functionality, third party integrations, and APIs.