As I take on more projects at Concealed, I've come to understand that they reach us in many different ways. Oyster Heaven started with a cold outreach: we noticed their website could be improved and made an initial contact. What began as a conversation turned into a full proposal and this became the first ever project I led at Concealed.
From the start, the goal of the project was clear: redesign Oyster Heaven's entire website, building on the already established brand, to create something cleaner, clearer and truly reflective of where they are headed.
Establishing the right foundations before designing
Before the project kicked off, I started by looking and analyzing their current website. My first impression was that it felt cluttered and hard to scan. Pages were built around large blocks of text instead of focusing on the visuals. Not only this, but the inconsistency across pages and lack of dynamism between sections made it clear that, while Oyster Heaven's brand already had the character the organization needed, their website wasn't able to carry that through consistently.
Thus, I moved onto a moodboard, pulling website references from across different industries that captured different approaches to structure, tone and clarity. Looking back, this is where the project's direction became real for me.
Strategic decisions that shaped our work
Throughout the redesign, two things kept coming back: simplicity and narrative.
Oyster Heaven had a lot to say about their technology, their science-based approach, their process and their results. But not everything could be highlighted at once or the impact of their work would get lost in the noise. So, I restructured layouts, shortened copy and built new sections to make sure the right information landed at the perfect moment and that every page pointed visitors toward a clear next step.
To me, the homepage was the hardest to get right. As the first page visitors see and the first step of the redesign, it set the tone for everything that followed. My instinct as a designer was to push into a creative direction that was further than what the project scope allowed. Looking back, what helped was presenting multiple versions with clear reasoning for each, making the thinking visible rather than just the outcome. This decision gave Oyster Heaven's Marketing Lead, Veronika Labody, something concrete to react to and helped us reach a direction that felt like a genuine redesign without straying from Oyster Heaven's vision.
The process of showing the work in progress shaped how the whole collaboration ran. Every Thursday, Veronika and I would get on a call to go through the new designs together. This became the moment where we reached real decisions as we discussed what was in front of us and pushed things further or pulled them back together. This rhythm, week by week, is what got the project to where it needed to go. It also reinforced to me that the best feedback loops only exist when both sides involved are genuinely invested in seeing a vision come to life.
Handed over, not just launched
The deliverable was never just a website. Alongside the redesigned pages, I put together a comprehensive handover document in Google Docs and a series of video walkthroughs so that anyone on Oyster Heaven's team could manage the website confidently from day one, regardless of their experience with Framer.
From the beginning, the goal was that nobody on their team should ever need me or the team at Concealed to keep their website running. The handover was where this intention became something concrete. Preparing the document alongside the website launch was one of the more demanding aspects of the project, but also one of the most satisfying to complete. This is the reason our team at Concealed loves using Framer and have become Framer Experts: to provide the best service while allowing our clients to have full maintenance autonomy.
What I learned from leading this project
When the website went live, a month's worth of effort suddenly felt concrete. Seeing something I had worked on get launched, being there to answer questions and watching it become something other people could use and understand without me truly showed me what it feels like to lead a project.
As with any project, there are things I would approach differently. I would take more creative risk early on, before feedback cycles narrowed the space for it. I would be more structured about syncs and discussions to avoid time getting overused with feedback loops. And I would pay closer attention to the details that only surface after launch. These are the lessons that come with leading something for the first time, and I know learning them this early on in my career will only improve all of my future work.
The result is something I am genuinely proud of. But more than the work itself, this project reinforced that the job does not start or end with design and execution. The focus should always be to make someone's vision come to life and leave them confident enough to carry it forward on their own. That is what drives this work, no matter whether the client is restoring oceans or running a small local business. The point is, and always will be, people.
Ready to move faster without compromising quality?
We work with ambitious teams to design and build digital products — fast, in-house, and with measurable results.
