Self-initiated concept
← All workA workshop, from nothing.
Business
Birchcroft
Involvement
Self-initiated, unpaid
Type
Brand & website concept
Year
2026
Why I built this
No real business
behind this one.
Unlike Keller Kitchens Cardiff (a real, independent showroom I built an unpaid concept for), Birchcroft doesn’t exist. There is no workshop, no maker, no completed kitchens. I invented the brand, the material story and the site to show a second register of work: what I’d do for a younger, materials-led business rather than a heritage showroom.
Every project named in the portfolio section is fictional. The material close-ups are generated, not photographed. There’s no real premises to photograph, so I chose not to fabricate documentary photos of a workshop that doesn’t exist.
What is real: the website itself. It’s a genuine, deployed site on its own subdomain, not a static export or a design-tool link: the same bar I hold client work to.
The approach
Let the material
do the talking.
Birchcroft’s whole identity is built around one physical detail: birch plywood’s laminated edge, left exposed instead of banded over. That became the site’s signature graphic device (a repeating striped motif) and the reason the copy keeps returning to edges and honesty.
Colour is used sparingly and deliberately: the layout itself stays close to birch, walnut and off-white, while saturated moss and rust only appear in the material photography: painted door fronts, styled shelving. Colour is something the workshop makes, not something the interface decorates itself with.
Typography and shape language deliberately diverge from Ward Design Studio’s own ruled-grid system: a warm serif display face, soft-rounded corners, no hairline grid. Client work should look like the client, not like a reskin of my own site.
What the concept covers
Brand identity
Naming, positioning and personality built from scratch for a workshop that didn't exist before this project, not a reskin of a real business.
Website design & build
A full responsive concept site with its own signature graphic device: a repeating plywood-edge stripe motif used throughout.
Material & colour system
A bespoke birch, walnut, moss and rust palette, with saturated colour deliberately reserved for material photography, not UI chrome.
Real deployment
Live at its own subdomain on real infrastructure, not a static mockup or a design-tool prototype link.
See it live