Client story: Carlisle Residential Properties website rebrand

Join us for a rare peek behind the curtain at a complete website rebrand! Designer Sam Strider shares how the new Carlisle Residential Properties corporate site evolved through a collaborative and thoughtful process.

How it started

In the late fall of 2023, two creative marketing specialists and I began our journey to redesign the corporate website for Carlisle Residential Properties. Their existing website was feeling dated and had a few issues.

• There were several places where the color contrast did not pass WCAG standards
• The mobile experience was lacking from a user standpoint
• The site was difficult for the Carlisle team to update

Ultimately it was time for a refresh. Carlisle was already using various Yardi or RentCafe services for many of their property sites. Their team was familiar with how simple it is to maintain our websites, so it made sense to migrate their corporate website to our platform.

During our initial discovery call, the Carlisle team gave us incredible insights into their company and the background for their branding. They really came prepared with what you need for a successful website launch.

With this information, we were able to get a feel for who they were. We were also able to identify some specific design problems to solve during the creative process, which helped inform the design decisions you’ll read about below.

First step: Brand insights

Our corporate specialty site design projects begin with a call between a creative marketing specialist, a web designer and representatives from the company we are working with. This discovery call is where we have our first real conversation with the client and learn who they are and what their vision is.

For this call, we prepare a presentation that covers a variety of topics related to the company, the portfolio and ultimately what they want to convey. In one part of the presentation, we go through a list of words to see which ones the client most identifies with.

These are the words that stood out most to Carlisle: boutique, responsive, charming and principled. Additional keywords they liked were trustworthy, professional and dependable.

Backstory

Translating ‘The right choice for the right reasons™’ into a website

During this call, we got some additional brand backstory from Matthew Rankin, the president and CEO:

“The name ‘Carlisle’ has this feel to it, almost like a wealth management kind of name. Because when you think about it, we’re managing people’s assets, and therefore their wealth. And so that’s where the name itself came from.

As far as the logomark, the founder was Joseph M. Brantley, the third, and so the three columns were a little bit of a nod to the founder of the company, but it also has a sense of stability. Again, that wealth management kind of connotation.

Now, why is it in a hexagon? It’s inspired by the honeycomb, bees and how they’re building a community. I love this little bit of our history.”

Visual impact

We always want to design a website that reflects our clients’ brand and adds to their identity.

I found Matthew’s story compelling and unexpected, especially from a property management company. Their brand colors were entirely in the blue family and were on the royal and navy side of that spectrum. The blues needed an accent.

Yellow hues complement blues exceedingly well, but considering the story, I thought that using it as an accent color it could be a subtle nod to the “hive.”

We combined this with a subtle hexagon gradient pattern used strategically throughout the site.

Matthew’s story also helped inform the design of the buttons. Two of the corners are removed from the yellow outlined rectangle to give the appearance of an elongated hexagon. When hovered over, the yellow fills in the button using a subtle animation, utilizing a bright color to catch the eye against the dark blues. 

Problem solved: Traditional vs. modern

Part of the discovery call is determining the marketing vision for the website, which is more or less the tone of the site. With Carlisle, they felt equally represented by two words: modern and traditional

By definition these words are antonyms. Modern feels sleek, sharp and bright. On the other hand, Traditional has some character to it while also evoking the sense of feeling comfortable and clean.

We wanted to convey both qualities without either overwhelming the other. There are two versions of the honeycomb pattern used throughout the site that work to achieve this.

To satisfy the traditional feel, one version of the pattern is light gray on a white background. It has edges that fade into the white background between sections.

Alternatively, for a modern touch, I redesigned the pattern to be light blue on a darker blue background. While there is still a blue gradient used over the honeycomb itself, there are hard edges between sections.

On the website, the combination of stock and property photography also helps to strike a balance between the two contrary styles.

Problem solved: Too much copy

The original Carlisle website had only a few pages, but on those pages lived an incredible amount of text. Most of it was listed on their former About Us page via seven different tabs. 

Typically, we’re not opposed to utilizing tabs to organize content. However, there are times where we need to make decisions based on our experiences as designers. In this case we did not think re-incorporating the tabs would be in their best interest.

Based on our conversations, I knew the navigation would be changing, and we would have the opportunity to move some of that content around to pages where it would be more applicable.

We wanted to showcase all the information upfront in a way that would be easy to follow.

I read through the original content carefully and evaluated what could be highlighted as the most important content, as well as what words and phrases should stand out within the text blocks. 

We used a variety of elements to keep the user engaged in the page, including content blocks with text and images that alternate sides between topics. In between those blocks we added additional text, icon or gallery sections to further break up the content and reinforce the messaging being conveyed in the text. 

In the text itself, I have used bold, blue text strategically to highlight the most important points while keeping the integrity of the paragraph.

Finished product

Go to the Carlisle Residential Properties corporate website. We’re happy with the result.

We got incredible feedback from the client too, which is the icing on the cake. “I just want to express my thanks for an amazing job! You all were such a pleasure to work with on this project, and I’m so grateful for all the effort,” shared Matthew.

Takeaways

Don’t shy away from design challenges that may seem difficult at first. You might just end up with something gorgeous when you’re done.

Don’t be afraid to shuffle content around and test it in different ways. The way your content starts out isn’t always how it needs to be shown on your website.

Special thanks

REACH Team
Neha Marathe, web design manager
Chelsey Shobert, creative marketing specialist
Alyson Hatfield, creative marketing specialist
Entire REACH web design team

Carlisle Team
Matthew Rankin, President & CEO
Eileen Soles, CFO & COO