Process notes
How this site was designed
A short, honest account of the redesign — the framework that governed every decision, where the assets came from, and how the work was audited — so the approach can be replicated for any brand that lives on an emotional knife-edge.
1 · The emotional-register framework
The visitor is a woman on her phone, days after a loss, exhausted and decision-fatigued. Every element had to serve one of two feelings — "they understand my person was special" or "I can hand this to someone." Anything serving neither was cut.
The register is celebration with gravity: playful about death, never flippant about grief. The single test applied to every color, word, and animation: would this feel right to someone crying while reading it? That test kept the pink anchored on near-black plum (a marigold on a dark altar, not a bubblegum site), banned exclamation points, slowed every animation to a held breath, and rewrote every CTA from transaction-speak ("Book Now") to human-speak ("Plan Their Celebration").
2 · Design decisions
Palette
Hearse pink #e8799f as the accent of life against near-black plum #161014 and ivory #f6efe7. Small-text pink lightens to #f2a9c0 on dark, deepens to #a83d68 on ivory — WCAG AA throughout. One marigold note (#e0a458) lives only in the petals.
Type
Prata — a romantic Didone, memorial-card-meets-Vogue — for display; Cormorant Garamond italic for moments of tenderness; Alegreya Sans, a warm humanist, for body and UI, sized generously for tired eyes on mobile.
Motion
One signature moment: rose petals drifting behind the hero, 30–56 second cycles, plus a 26-second breathing zoom on the hearse. Nothing bounces. Everything honors prefers-reduced-motion.
Conversion
A grief-state persuasion sequence: reassure in the first screen (areas, no pressure, take any piece), keep the path to three steps, and never let the inquiry be more than one thumb-tap away — sticky CTA bar on mobile.
3 · Asset & copy pipeline
Every photograph is real, pulled from the existing site: the hearse, Sara, the planning table, the ceremony details. No stock imagery — trust is the product, and stock reads as stock. Copy was rewritten entirely from the brand's own voice ("a goodbye should never feel like a template"), with typos fixed (Unforgettable, San Bernardino), euphemism stacks removed, and every real fact preserved verbatim: $250 starting price, the children-under-ten discount, the real testimonials, Sara as sole driver. Nothing was invented.
The playful line "The most unique ride to the other side" was audited against the register test and kept — demoted from a shouting headline to a quiet, slow marquee between sections, where it reads as the brand's wink rather than its pitch. It can be switched off entirely.
4 · The three audit passes
Pass one — design flaws
Spacing rhythm unified on a fluid clamp() scale; contrast checked on every text/background pair; hero headline max-width set to kill orphans; animation timing slowed until nothing drew attention to itself; breakpoints exercised from 320px up.
Pass two — emotional flaws
Every section re-read as the grieving reader at 2am. Casualties: all exclamation points near grief, "Book Now", sales adjectives, and any sentence that asked her to be impressed rather than understood. The children's section was rewritten three times until it led with her burden, not the offer.
Pass three — conversion flaws
The inquiry is reachable in one tap from every scroll position. The form shows three fields; the date field hides until asked for. The confirmation message is specific and warm — a promise of a person, within a day, not a ticket number.