Adams Steel

Case Study

Adams Steel Service

During the year of 2020 I was asked to do a brand asset refresh and complete website overhaul for Adams Steel Service. They are a company with decades of experience in structural steel and decorative metal production based in McHenry, Illinois.

What I Did

Reworked brand expression around an existing logo, refined existing business language
Develop a custom webflow website.
Developed a set of custom icons specifically for Adams Steel and metallurgical processes
Shot custom photography featuring commercial, residential, crane and team focused content
Streamlined their new customer data process to improve internal functionality

01.

Current State

Existing Website

The owner of Adams Steel reached out to me and asked if I would take a look at the website. There were lots of quirks, sizing and padding issues, as well as image content that left a lot to be desired.

New Day,
New Tools

The Adams Steel website that I inherited was built using Wordpress, a platform that has served many for a long time but is definitely in its sunset era. When discussing the new website options with the owner of Adams Steel we arrived at a very content media rich redesign. It was due to this that I choose to utilize Webflow

02.

Content Generation

Visiting the Facility

Before I started to work on the new website design I went out to the Adams Steel Service office and metal facility to get to know the services they provide a little better. Here I got to photograph the employees in action.

Refreshed Brand

I wanted the brand and website to reflect a more modern, stylish, and dependable look. I choose a set of three cool colors to give the feeling of cold metal or steel. The logo on the signage features Red and I wanted to keep the essence while giving it a fresh feel. However the logo on the old website features a gold. I wanted to bring them inline with each other. I choose Averta for the font family as it is clean and refined yet approachable and friendly.

Icon Creation

After my visit to Adams Steel I had a collection of some great content of the employees at work. I also got a full tour of the facilities, equipment and production methods, this allowed me to create a set of custom icons for the company. The steel themed colors from the refresh brand played well with the icons featuring metallurgical processes.

Wrapping up Photo Content

Before I started the web development phase I needed to gather a bit more content for the website, specifically, residential and commercial railings, structural steel and crane installations. I was out on-site visits all over Illinois with the Adams team for more than 2 days.

03.

New Website

Learning in tandem

This was my first time using Webflow so I was learning as I developed the website. I relied on wireframes and low fidelity prototypes in Sketch to be sure my designs were going to flow well. The website features the custom iconography as well as the rich photography I shot out in the field.