Poo Poo Paper Website Redesign

A project born from a cold email email based on a wacky news story that turned into a wonderful project and a fun website. Visit the site

While it may be a strange name for a client it certainly gets the attention of potential employers. The company is The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Company and they are focused on the production, innovation and marketing of products made from elephant poo. They have journals, note boxes, and stationery with an ever expanding product base. I can personally attest to the quality and lack of smell that are characteristics of their products. The site also has a great wealth of information about African Elephants who produce the raw materials necessary for their products. A percentage of all of their sales go to elephant welfare and conservation programs.

The story of how I came upon the opportunity to redesign this highly interesting and informative site is a lesson in seemingly odd and spur of the moment networking and taking chances. As I was browsing CNN.com one morning with a mug of orange juice, I watched a serial video segment called News of the Weird (I believe was it’s title) because those are the truly interesting things on CNN. One of the segments in the video was about The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Company and I became interested in their strange process and products. At the end of the segment, the strange looking man in the video suggested that I go to the website to find out more information and I took him up on the offer.

The website was very basic and lacked a the personality of the company that I got from my video introduction. There was, of course, a contact page and a working email so I decided to send a cold email to the company, testing the waters to see if there would be interest in a website redesign. The email was of course complete with some explanation of why it might be a good idea, why me, and links to my previous work. The company was, and still is, growing and gaining exposure so it was a good time for them to have a shiny new website.

(Aside): I do cold emails all to time to all sorts of sites that are in need of a website or in need of a redesign. You don’t have anything to lose by inquiring whether they would like you to design a website for them. The worst they can do is say no and if they say yes then you’ve found yourself a new client. I usually do this on site’s with content that I am really interested in or things that I think deserve new sites, usually companies with more exposure. To save time I also like to have email “templates” ready in which I can fill in some personalized information and send off quickly.

I got a response shortly thereafter acknowledging that their current website was lacking in certain areas but expressing at this time that I should make suggestions to improve the site rather than redesign the whole thing. Although not the desired response necessarily, I wrote a very thorough email back listing all of my suggestions with explanations about what could truly be improved on the site. I stuck to larger design issues but included the more important details that would make the site more effective and professional.

After sending this off I got a response saying that the owner would be interested in seeing more specifically what I had in mind design wise and listed some characteristics of the site. In addition though, he said a redesign would not be probably until after the holiday rush which as certainly fine with me. In the mean times we refined his ideas about the site in it’s new form and began to send flats of ideas back and forth.

This site we came up with uses the colors and textures of the products as some of the main branding of the site aside from the logo. Typographic choices and thumbnail sized icons also make up a good bit of the personality of this site as is especially evident on the home page. Some other important elements are the typographic braces that frame the paragraphs and expand with content, the rotating slogans at the footer, and of course very well written and entertaining copy produced by the client.

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This is one of the only designs that I look back on fondly, to be honest. Most times sites that I’ve designed lost their spark, sometimes before I’m done designing them. In this case, however, that didn’t happen and I think that’s because my communication with the client allowed the site to be designed in a way that fit the company very well. This good visual fit came through many, many revisions and changing of ideas and was worth it because it led to a lasting design solution.

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