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774-565-0140Custom Website Design for Vlaco Marine
- Strategic Website Consultation
- Custom Logo Design
- Custom Responsive Website Design
- Personalized Instructions for Updating Website Content
- Maintenance Plan providing Monitoring, Backups, and Security
Spotlight Client: Vlaco Marine - Middleboro, MA
Duane Vlaco is a Massachusetts Maritime graduate who grew up on a farm in Middleboro, Massachusetts. He started Vlaco Marine to fulfill the dream of owning and operating his own business on the water. Duane wanted a website where he could send potential clients to see the results of his capabilities and success with past projects. He reached out to Web Design by Robin for help. She had done the website for his brother Ryan’s business, RYCO Excavation, and he highly recommended her work.
How Our Web Design Will Help Them Thrive
Website Design
The first thing we did for Duane was create his logo from his own hand-drawn sketch. He was getting t-shirts made and needed the artwork files to send to the printer. Duane is one of those clients that really knows what he wants, and we really appreciate that about him.
Next, we listened to him as he told us all about his marine construction business. This was our first website for a marine construction company and we had a lot to learn. He told us, "that's okay, I don't know anything about website design."
We learned that his business consisted of five key service offerings: dock/pier construction, his truckable barge (which is very cool, by the way), land/sea pile driving, yacht management, and other services. This final page was to be a catchall for things like crane services, repairs, emergency response, transportation, and salvage.
We found that images are the key element of telling the story of what he does as opposed to words, so imagery became the primary focus of the design. We chose large bold images for the rotating background on his Home page to showcase the five key services he offers. We also used images for the service click-through buttons to keep things light on words and heavy on visual images. For the individual service pages, Duane requested to have the ability to update the images to showcase new jobs he worked on. Therefore we created a gallery at the bottom of each page. Duane carefully selected these images so that they show a wide variety of his extensive capabilities and the services he offers.
It was a really fun project to work on and we look forward to watching his new business grow and thrive.
Logo Design
One of the unique pieces of equipment that Vlaco Marine has is a truckable, expandable crane barge. A crane barge is simply a barge with a crane specialized in lifting heavy loads. Duane wanted his logo to feature this crane, extending out of the “V” in some manner. We did just that, taking care to research that equipment so we could accurately simplify the crane so that it was recognizable, but not too complex for printing and legibility. The logo is graphically illustrative, including a boat propeller inside the “O” and underlining the company name with a thick black line, which is angled on one side to resemble the barge, which they have affectionately nicknamed, “Marge”. We presented Duane with multiple sketches showing different angles and colors for the crane, with a simple blue and gray, both in various shades, being his final selection.
Launch date: February 2020
Curious about how this project came out? Take a look for yourself.