From a nameto a runningbusiness.
A business services firm that existed as an idea and a company name. We built everything a customer would ever see and everything underneath it: the identity, the design system, the printed collateral, the website, and the cloud, DNS and email it all runs on. One studio, one invoice, no vendors to coordinate.
Ongoing: hosting, domains, email and support retainer
- Engaged
- Pre-launch, from zero
- Scope
- Brand, print, web, infrastructure
- Stack
- Next.js on AWS
- Today
- Retained for ops and support
Most firms at this stage hire four suppliers: a designer for the logo, a print shop for the cards, a web agency for the site, and an IT contractor for email and domains. Four contracts, four timelines, and four people who each believe the delay is one of the other three.
SanBar hired one. That is the whole argument for how we work, and this project is the cleanest example of it.
What we built
Four workstreams, run in sequence by the same people, so each one could assume the last.
A mark, a type and color system, and the rules that keep them intact once other people start using them.
- Primary logo, icon mark and horizontal lockup
- Type scale and color system with defined usage
- Document and letterhead templates
- Usage rules written for non-designers
- Source files handed over, not just exports
Stationery and cards, with each card carrying a tracked QR code so a handshake shows up in analytics.
- Business card design, print-ready artwork
- Custom QR codes with campaign tracking
- Scans attributed in analytics alongside web traffic
- Letterhead and document templates
- Print specification and vendor handoff
A custom Next.js build, not a template, sized to what the business actually needed to say.
- Custom design, built from the identity
- Next.js, statically rendered
- Responsive across breakpoints
- Technical SEO foundation
- Analytics wired to the QR campaigns
The layer nobody sees until it breaks: hosting, domain, business email and the records that make mail deliverable.
- AWS hosting and deployment
- Domain registration and DNS management
- Google Workspace setup and migration
- SPF, DKIM and DMARC so mail lands
- SSL and certificate renewal
The site
Built from the design system rather than decorated afterward.
The QR decision
A business card is the one piece of marketing with no analytics attached to it. You hand out two hundred and you find out nothing. So the cards carry a tracked QR code: the scan lands on the site with campaign parameters, and it shows up in the same reporting as every other channel.
It costs nothing extra at print time, and it converts the most analog thing the business does into something measurable. That is the kind of decision you only make when the person designing the card is also the person wiring up the analytics.
What continues
The project did not end at launch, which is usually where a web agency leaves. We still hold the hosting, the domains, the DNS and the Google Workspace tenancy, and we are the number they call when something is wrong.
Certificates renew, records stay correct, and mail keeps arriving. There is no in-house technical owner at SanBar and there does not need to be.
Stack
- Logo and mark system
- Type and color system
- Print artwork
- Tracked QR codes
- Document templates
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Responsive layout
- Technical SEO
- AWS
- DNS management
- Google Workspace
- SPF / DKIM / DMARC
- SSL
- Support retainer