A fresh take on real estate investment web design for advisory firm L&O

There’s a deep satisfaction inherent in a client returning for more, especially when that second piece of work is more significant than the first time. Our work with property advisory L&O stretches back to 2019 when we first worked on a website for the firm. It was a project of which we were all incredibly proud. There was a sleekness to the design, a crisp modernity that really suited a partnership that is invested in every detail of their process.

This next stage of work for L&O has taken things to the next stage, with a complete rebrand, new video custom-shot for the project, followed by a real estate investment web design project.

The end result has been far more top-to-toe than I think any of us envisaged. The finished work evolves our first stage of work, retains the best elements of it, but ultimately rethinks and expands it – as all the best design projects do.

Logo & Orientation

While we knew from the very beginning of the project that the website was going to have an update, before we began that work, there was a more vexed question of what to do with the corporate identity. Why so vexed? It was a question the firm had aired for some time: whilst everyone knew them as L&O, in fact their name was London & Oriental with a longstanding logo developed at the inception of the business. That last word was one that no longer fit for a variety of reasons, mainly a practical one: that the firm handles property investment from many places, not solely Asia. After very careful consideration, a new piece of branding with the name L&O became the brief.

Given that change was afoot, part of the story that we agreed with the team was a sense of continuity. Red had always been the L&O colour, and it was decided that red it would remain. Then, in our web design, we had used squares repeatedly as a design motif. From our perspective there was a well of great stuff we had developed not so long ago that would serve us well as a beginning. We looked at a wide range of ideas and sat and sketched with the team as they explained the direction they wanted to go in.

These sessions and a series of evolving concepts resulted in the finished design – and a new approach to typography which we are using throughout every aspect of the project, particularly the real estate investment web design which, once the logo was decided, was the next piece of work to complete.

The first physical evidence of the new brand was a beautiful scarlet business card. Rather than printing it, we used a white foil on each side of the card to deliver a smart, unusual card that really stands out.

Look & Observe

The new logo was one element which we hadn’t worked on in the first incarnation of the L&O project. The other element was the photography. The end result we wanted an over-arching concept of the L&O project as a holistic brand design. With the new identity agreed, we worked on two sessions of custom shot brand photography. The first focussed on the team, the second on a signature development the firm had completed in Victoria, called Buckingham Gate. In the previous developments showcased on the website, the photography was a mix of shots, primarily supplied upon completion. That kind of imagery can be somewhat sterile – for instance the wide expanse of office space, unfurnished. The intention with this exercise was to create a series of shots showing a mature development, with established retail, that were unique to the firm.

In addition to this wide-ranging library of shots we completed, I had also been keen to incorporate video in the website, but not having done that sort of work before, the team were understandably cautious. With this in mind, I decided that working with a safe pair of hands I knew well for the still shots would be a good start. We’ve worked with photographer Steve Lancefield many times and this sort of blend of mood-led material as well as feature shot was right up his street. We had a chance to take shots of the team on the 5th floor of Buckingham Gate, capturing headshot type pictures as well as more informal shots. The idea was to leave them with plenty of material both for the site as well as proposal documents should they be required.

Having done that, I worked once again with the videomaker Rea Shilian. My idea was to capture a sense of the space and movement by almost having moving images, inspired by Steve’s shots. The alternative was a super slow left to right pan at different points in the development. This sort of video is not exactly documentary, but neither is it static. As we shot it, we knew it needed to be suitable to have text or logos positioned over it. So the content itself was minimal and spare, but then that was the point. We’ve also then used different sections of the film cut together in places, to give a mix of content.

Layout & Online

When we completed the first iteration of the L&O website in 2020, I felt it achieved something really special. There was a style and individuality that made the site stand out, achieving something genuinely special. Times move on and the site was due an update, and with the firm’s new branding as well as both custom shot video and photography, a fresh take on key elements of the site was required.

What pleases me about this refresh though is that we’ve carefully kept the best elements of the initial design, then across key pages of the site taking various graphic parts of it and applying them to new ways. In particular we’ve added not merely video but also parallax motion graphics. The homepage of the site presents the new logo front and centre, then as a user scrolls down it slides from the centre of the page into the navigation bar in one smooth (and deeply satisfying) motion.

Essentially the idea with this piece of work was less a total redesign but more rethinking our approach as we introduce and work with the new brand design. As I mentioned earlier, the site had always used squares as a key design element; this takes elements from that layout such as the grid of dots that had been used in one small area on the project pages and brings them more front and centre, adding them as image overlays.

The end result of the project is a real satisfying conclusion to a project begun as an exploratory design brief and has ended as a rethink of the naming of the firm, the overall look of the business, a stunning piece of print and refreshed real estate investment web design. It’s set L&O up for a new era and been the continuation of a longstanding and deeply satisfying client/design team collaboration.

Now is the time to invest in your firm: we can help you with best-in-class real estate investment web design

The L&O project is a textbook case study for a continuing relationship between a company and its design agency. We are never precious about ideas that have had their day, but equally stand up for what’s right for you, even if that means retaining someone else’s great creative branding… we just find a way to enhance and move it on to the next stage.

We understand the attraction of applying fresh ideas – instantly or incrementally. Why not get in touch to discuss a range of different approaches? Whether you’re after real estate investment web design and operate in the UK or work across continents, we can work on designs from the creative to the corporate, depending on your brief and budget.