It took us more time than expected but here we are! A new website and a new start. I’m so happy to be writing this post in this brand new blog layout 🙂

I guess we didn’t quite “dislike” our previous website version but we did think it was not truly adapted to our philosophy and what we wanted to convey. The first thing we did was to not have our portfolio on the landing page. This is something many creative businesses do, but it didn’t really fit with us, we found it rather “cold” and impersonal. Even though our portfolio was connected to our blog posts, we didn’t like it being the first thing people would see. It was like saying: “Hey, we’re Kinlake, look at our work, this is who we are“. We didn’t like that, so we decided to use our blog itself as a highlight. It’s a controversial move, but for us Kinlake is not only our business to be shown through our finished projects, it’s also the everyday creativity we apply in our day-to-day life, which we try to capture on this blog. This blog tells our story, and we really wanted people to connect with us not only based on our showcased work but also our lifestyle and inspirations.

Since the beginning, we never wanted Kinlake to be based solely on business. We knew we wanted to make it into a place of expression, inspiration, thoughts. Something personal. Blogging is our favourite way to do that, and so it was something very close to our hearts. We feel that through blogging, we can open up to the world, be ourselves, tell our story and connect with like-minded people, such as other creative minds, small businesses and makers who are in the same boat as us, or even the average person just looking for a bit of distraction and inspiration like you and I. As we summed it up on our new “About” page:

During work hours, we form a full-service creative studio and we particularly like to work with people and new businesses with a positive impact and who ache to see their ideas happen. The rest of the time, we use our blog as our personal creative outlet in which we share our stories and thoughts that may possibly inspire others to chase their dreams and live a simple, yet happily fulfilled life

Another reason why we did this was to show the people we work with, that our creativity is not solely based on our portfolio. We want to be defined by our vision more than the logos, websites or other projects we’ve done for past clients, as we believe that is where our best work comes from. Our blog is our creative space to experiment and to tell our story, and it’s in this space that new exciting things will be happening. It’s also the best way to get to know us and what we believe in.

We hope you enjoy it and we can’t wait to hear what you think! Keep an eye on it, because this space will be moving and grooving. We will be posting on the blog quite regularly, around various subjects. There will be advice & tips, freebies, DIYs, music playlists, projects in progress, photo stories, recipes… Pretty much everything we like, do, and want to share will be here for you to see 🙂

We’re also planning some more activities that will be both “online” and “offline”, but we can’t tell you much about them yet. Just stick around and you’ll see!