Vantage West had 60 years of trust with its members — and a website that buried it. Redundant pages, unclear navigation, and an underused photo library meant a well-loved local brand felt generic online. The mandate: modernize without losing what made them feel like them.
What started as a homepage redesign became a full 70+ page rebuild — earned, not planned, after the new direction proved itself with the client.
Client:
Vantage West Credit Union
Industry
Financial Services
Timeline:
March 2025 – December 2025
Role:
Head of Creative — the primary design voice across a year-long, agency-wide effort significant enough that the agency’s own CEO stepped in as project manager. Directed a subcontractor team through a 70+ page system build and stepped in personally wherever the work outpaced existing in-house expertise.
Before touching 70 pages, we had to earn the right to. Concept mockups established a new visual language and built the trust needed to move forward.
Process Step 1
Concept Exploration
Four to six flat mockups translated 60 years of brand equity into a modern direction, testing early on whether new could still feel familiar to a client wary of losing what worked.
Early concept direction, established before any page-level design began.
Key Decision
Sourcing a Brand's Voice, Not Just Its Photos
The Tension
VW’s own photography couldn’t cover every page, and generic stock imagery risked flattening a brand built on being local and personable.
The Choice
Sourced outside imagery against an internalized sense of VW’s visual voice, then made the case for each choice to the client — repeated dozens of times across the build. A once-underused copper accent from the brand guidelines was reintroduced in select moments for similar reasons — a smaller instance of the same instinct.
The Outcome
Kept every page feeling like VW’s own, even where their photo library couldn’t reach — a judgment call made continuously, not once.
Process Step 2
Archetype Development
Personal Banking, Business Banking, Benefits, Contact, and Knowledge Base each got a parent template — approved once, then extended across dozens of pages by a subcontracted team working from those standards.
Key Decision
Correcting Before The Client Sees It
The Tension
Subcontracted pages regularly landed close, but not close enough to survive client or PM review.
The Choice
Reviewed and corrected every page before handoff — with detailed feedback so the same gaps didn’t repeat.
The Outcome
Protected the system’s integrity at scale without slowing delegation down.
Act 2
Build the System
With direction validated, the work shifted from designing pages to designing a system — repeatable archetypes built to scale across every business line through a subcontractor team, without losing quality along the way.
Process Step 3
Mega Menu
A flat, hard-to-navigate menu became a dense mega menu — sub-menus, live notifications, and full mobile optimization, designed and built firsthand.
Full mobile optimization built alongside the desktop system.
Key Decision
Closing The Gap Myself
The Tension
Tech Support was already stretched thin. The menu still needed real front-end problem-solving — including a custom notification animation no one had bandwidth to own.
The Choice
Learned what was needed and built it directly rather than pulling another team deeper into an already strained project.
The Outcome
Kept the deliverable moving without costing the team its capacity.
Process Step 4
Knowledge Base Migration
Years of blog content needed a new home on the rebuilt site — but migration revealed the posts had been built as orphaned pages, with no clear path for users to find them in the first place.
Key Decision
Fixing The Real Problem, Not Just The Migration
The Tension
Legacy blog posts were built as orphaned pages with no clear path in — a content and CMS problem hiding inside a simple migration task.
The Choice
Designed a new Knowledge Base archive with global search and category-based sub-archives.
The Outcome
Solved the user-facing findability problem and cleaned up the backend content structure in one move.
Act 3
Solve What the System Couldn't
The hardest problems didn’t fit the template — they needed direct ownership.
Key Metrics
Project Metrics
Outcomes
Shipped on time. The agency’s relationship with Vantage West continues today through ongoing
marketing and technical support — a rare signal of trust for a project this large.