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Build log

Building Creative Guinep

Crafting our home: A hybrid design engineering project documenting the creation of the Guinep brand, design system, and portfolio. #buildinginpublic

Illustration of a team building a giant Creative Guinep G
Status
Building

In progress

Finalising core colour & type system

Shipped

01 · Define MVP layout

Ship early. Evolve intentionally

Rather than designing everything in isolation and waiting for a “perfect” final version, we approached Guinep the way we would approach any modern product: define a clear MVP, ship early, and evolve intentionally.

The goal for v1 was simple: establish a minimal, functional foundation that we could build on. By stripping the interface back to monochrome UI, a single type system, and essential layout rules, we were able to focus first on structure, usability, and clarity.

Each subsequent layer like typography refinement, colour exploration, component development, and interaction polish will be added through an iterative, design-system-first process.

Shipped The first version of the site on desktop and mobile: a plain white, monochrome layout

The very first site structure went live

Very plain, very white but we had some building to do

Decision

We went straight to work on figuring out what our voice would be and how we want to look to the world wide web.

We played around with colours and type, designed, tweaked, and started again. We slowly found our flow and sat with a few designs for a few days.

Trade-off

Our pace was intentionally slow, we were still working with clients and able to show off other client projects while our home was under construction.

We had no deadlines, we wanted to experiment and we had to of course focus on what our clients needed from us too.

Shipped

02 · Choose colour system

Colours, colours and more colours

Creative Guinep needed to feel warm and creative, without sacrificing clarity or scalability.

Shipped

Color palette

  • Brand primary

    #0599B2

  • Border default

    #C4C8D0

  • Surface inverse

    #FFFFFF

  • Brand accent

    #CCFF00

Shipped

03 · Choose type system

Exploring font pairings

The goal was to create a type system flexible enough to express the playful, creative side of the brand while still feeling grounded and readable for longer-form content.

After experimenting with a few combinations, the final pairing settled on Rammetto One for expressive display moments and Montserrat, a neutral sans-serif, for the main body text.

Shipped

Typography

Heading - Montserrat

Heading - Montserrat

Body - Montserrat

Kicker - Montserrat

Logo - Rammetto One

Example body copy

Make the important things easier to see.

We design systems that reduce friction without removing character. Clear hierarchy, familiar patterns and thoughtful defaults help teams move with confidence while keeping every experience recognisably human.