Caldwell Consulting & Design

Website Redesign · Logo Redesign · Visual Identity

Texas Business Litigation

The Antitrust & Business Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas had a website and a logo that both predated the way its members actually use them. CCD redrew the mark and redesigned the site around it.

Client
Antitrust & Business Litigation Section, State Bar of Texas
Scope
Website Redesign, Logo Redesign, Site Structure & Navigation, Visual Identity
Live site
texbuslit.org

Identity redesign

A mark, not a line of type

The original identity was a typeset lockup: an outlined star between the word SINCE and the year 1976, the section name set below it. CCD redrew it as a seal, which is the form a State Bar section is actually read as, and which survives being reproduced at an inch wide.

The redesign keeps what the section is entitled to keep: the Texas star, the laurel, and the navy it already used. What changes is that those become one drawn mark instead of an arrangement of type, so the identity holds at a favicon, in a document header, and on a conference badge.

The two current marks are one identity, not two options. The header variant is the same star and laurel without the rings and the text around them, for use beside the section name at a size where the ring's type would be unreadable anyway.

The header variant of the same seal: the star and the laurel wreath alone, without the rings and lettering that surround them in the full mark.
Header variant

Website redesign

Same material, findable

The section publishes court reporting, CLE course materials, a journal, webinars, and an annual meeting. None of that changed. What changed is that a member can now find a specific thing without reading the homepage first.

BeforeOriginal website
The section website before the redesign: a narrow centered page with a serif navigation bar, small blue body text running the full width, a row of four flat colored circles labeled Journal, Events, Links and Jury Charges, a clip-art monopoly diagram, and a strip of thumbnail images at the bottom.
AfterCCD redesign
The redesigned homepage: the seal and section name in a dark navy header with a full menu, a navy hero carrying the headline Join a Network of Leading Texas Attorneys and two buttons, a Who We Are band with membership figures, and a dated list of upcoming events below.

The original put every kind of content on one plane: four colored circles, a paragraph each, and a thumbnail strip, with no way to tell which of them was the thing you came for. The redesign gives the section a real menu, a hero that says who the site is for, and separate landing places for membership, business courts, events, and resources.

The palette is navy and gold with a serif for headings, which is the register the material already had in print. The reference pages are the constraint: they are long, they are read rather than skimmed, and they had to stay comfortable at full length.

The current site

Reference pages and phones

The Business Courts reference page: a navy page header above a white body of explanatory text about the Texas Business Court, set in a serif and sans-serif pairing.
Reference page
The homepage on a phone, with the seal and section name in the header and the annual meeting announcement stacked below.
Phone

The seal is what makes the small end of the system work. At phone width the header keeps the mark and the section name and drops everything else to a menu, and the reference pages reflow to a single readable column without losing the heading structure that makes them navigable.

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