Truth be told: I’m obsessed with food blogs. I love to eat. I love to cook. So, when Nancy Granada from Kindred-Kitchen contacted me to re-design her food blog, I nearly choked on my garden vegetable enchiladas.

Nancy’s story is nothing short of inspirational. She’s actually gained and lost over 100 pounds in her lifetime. (I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in…) In fact, she’s been able to maintain her weight through the beauty of teaching herself how to cook quick, delicious and healthy recipes that skews gluten-free, and she chronicles her adventures on her blog. Having personally gained and lost 40 pounds in my post-college days, Nancy’s story and project appealed to me immediately and I couldn’t wait to begin. Or try her Brie and Apple Turkey Burger recipe. (Spoiler alert: It’s AWESOME.)

For this project, Nancy wanted to expand the blog to a proper website (with re-vamped branding!) that incorporated more healthy eating and living content, as well as multimedia (video and podcasts.) But first, we needed to hop on a logo design to set the stage for her branding.

The logo uses two forks, doubling as “i’s” to symbolize two kindred spirits. The typography has “kindred” in a bold font and “kitchen” in a lighter weight to signify the transformative possibilities found in the recipes and blog. The carrot doubles as a hyphen, reminding viewers that there’s also a hyphen in the URL for the website. The colors are a mix of bold, fresh and vibrant teals, oranges, and lime greens, matching the high-energy of Nancy’s writing style and the deliciousness of her recipes.

Next, we then moved on to Mood Boards, establishing the new design standards her materials would take on.

Kindred-Kitchen website before:

Kindred-Kitchen website after:

Overall, I stuck with the color scheme and fonts from the logo, using a beige kitchen tile pattern to add emphasis where necessary on key conversion areas (the e-mail sign up list and tagline explanation.) Kitchen refrigerator magnets and tomato social networking illustrations help to keep the tone of the site fun, relateable and most of all, judgment-free.