Ladies and Gentlemen, it is official! I’ve just signed the contract to start the building of a brand spankin’ new Emily Ley Paper website. I knew since I started this adventure that a strong web presence that really represented ELP and my style would be very, very important. I’ve been using Squarespace for my website (a wonderful resource for any of you that are looking for an easy-to-use interface at a reasonable price) and have learned more about HTML than I ever needed/wanted to know. But it’s time to take my website up a notch.

I also knew that websites aren’t cheap, so I contacted a couple of web designers to get quotes and ideas from all of them. They all came back fantastic and it was really hard choosing which to go with. In the long run, I decided to work with the ladies of Hi Design House in Los Angeles. The girls are so great and they’re from Florida also! Their previous work (Urbanic and Vie are really great) really reflects an edgy but simple style that I’d really like ELP to evolve into.

It’s going to be a busy few months because I’ll have to force myself to finalize and photograph some products for the ecommerce side and photos of some custom work for the portfolio side. But I’m really excited to get started. Kendra, my contact there, told me yesterday that we’ll start with brand definition to create a filter through which all of their design work, styling, etc will be put through. It’ll be a long process and we’re going to work through this in phases (so that the website grows as ELP grows) but I plan to update regularly on the blog to let you guys know what’s happening. I’ve loved reading other blogs written by small business owners with insight and advice into how the process works… and the growing pains and milestones achieved along the way.

Cheers! Emily