Background
The Company
R Levesque Associates, Inc., also called RLA Land, is a second generation, multi-disciplinary, land-planning company offering professional services in the areas of environmental design, landscape architecture, civil engineering, permitting, land planning, project management and land survey.
RLA’s sole mission is to aid clients in developing innovative, environmentally sound and cost-effective projects that promote sustainable development by offering land survey, land planning, site design, landscape architecture, master planning, environmental permitting and wetland delineation services.
The Beginning
The Rebranding
RLA
and I began working together in 2008 when president and landscape architect Robert Levesque decided that RLA needed to update their branding and web presence. We began by updating their main logo with some color, then creating an alternate logo that showed the company’s full name more clearly.
When I began working with R Levesque Associates Inc, also known as RLA Land, they were looking to update their identity. As a second generation company, their original logo had served them well for many years, yet it was time for a revision. In particular, their muted logo needed a little pizazz that only a splash of bold color can bring.
The second challenge they faced was that their current logo represented the “RLA” version of their name, however, they had no means of representing the company’s actual, longer name: R Levesque Associates, Inc. Consequently, they were looking for a way to marry the two names using separate logos that could be used independently or together.
By combining the now colorful box ‘RLA’ logo with the stacked, and very easily read (this was also important to them) ‘R Levesque Associates Inc’ logo, I was able to offer them just that. Both logos work well on their own and, when put together, form a strong, clear visual identity for their company.
Once RLA’s logo was redesigned, I did a complete redesign of their identity material, including business cards and letterhead.
Building a Web Presence
With Customers in Mind
Once I had completed a rebranding for RLA Land, we moved on to working on their web presence. When it came to designing the website, it was essential that the public be able to quickly, easily and visually get a sense for RLA’s work, so I designed a home page that featured a large slide show of their past work.
As always, when possible, the website was designed to streamline business operations and eliminate time consuming tasks that can be automated. For that reason, we also added site elements such as the Mortgage Loan Inspection Request Form to RLA’s site, which automated the submission and archiving of these common requests.
Additional elements were added to the site in order to engage their audience. For example, the Question & Answer Forum was created to provide information to the general public and make RLA the go-to source for land planning information.
Of course, standard elements such as a newsletter subscription page was also added. RLA subscribers are automatically added to their email list and pre-formatted newsletter templates can be sent easily from the admin interface of the site.
Effortless Content
Some Websites Create Work. This One Just Works.
RLA’s phone to slideshow, blog and newsletter functionality maximizes their marketing and communications ability without bogging them down with website management tasks.
RLA Land’s website has undergone a lot of design and development since we first began working together in 2007. Their site is now WordPress driven, with a custom theme and a lot of functionality that makes life and marketing easier for the RLA team.
RLA wanted the ability to quickly, easily and regularly showcase photos of what his company they were working on for their customers, without having to manually edit thier site. Using WordPress as a content management system (with a custom theme), I created a site that requires their team to do little more than take a photo on a phone then send it as email attachment. The rest of the process was fully automated!
When appropriate, the team member submitting the photo can add a title using the subject of the email and any text to be featured with the image can simply be added into the body of the email. It is that easy! The website opens the email, saves the photo, resizes the photo, optimizes it for online use, adds it to the slide show on the company’s homepage, posts it to the company “News & Events” page, and then inserts into an email newsletter template and emails it to the company mailing list all by itself!
The RLA team is able to click, send and be back to work in under a minute, and their customer’s are kept informed and excited about their work. Is your website working for you?
Browse Additional Work Done for RLA
