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Bright Vale Design studio of one
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A working desk at dusk with a laptop showing lines of code and a notebook beside it
Freelance brand & website design

One designer, start to launch.

I am Nina Alder, and Bright Vale is just me. I shape the words and pictures, design the pages, write the code and hand you a site your team can keep running.

Start a brief See recent projects
  • Brand basics
  • Hand-coded sites
  • Ongoing care
  • Remote, UK hours
Next start 5 Jan Two slots left
for Q1
Portrait of Nina Alder, the freelance designer behind Bright Vale
Who you work with

No account manager, no handover gaps.

Small studios and independent practices usually get passed around. Here the person you meet on the first call is the one writing the CSS at the end. That keeps decisions quick and the final site close to what we agreed.

How I workTwo projects at a time, so your week is never spent waiting in a queue. Weekly written updates with a link to the live staging build.

What I bringYears spent designing for shops, surveyors, clinics and workshops — plus the front-end build, so nothing is lost between design and code.

Services

Three lanes, clearly scoped.

Most clients start in lane 02 and add lane 01 if the brand needs tidying first. Each lane lists what is included so the quote holds no surprises.

01

Brand basics

A workable identity for a business that needs to look settled, not a 60-page rebrand.

  • Wordmark plus one simple mark
  • Type and colour system with usage rules
  • Two applications of your choice — signage, cards, email footer
  • One-page guidelines you can send to a printer
02

Website design & build

Designed in the browser and hand-coded, so what you approve is what ships.

  • Page map, content plan and one design direction, refined
  • Responsive build tested on real phones, not only a simulator
  • Editable content areas so staff can change copy and images
  • Accessibility and speed pass before launch
  • Launch, redirects and a 30-day settling window
03

Ongoing care

For sites that keep growing after launch, booked as a small monthly block.

  • New pages, landing pages and seasonal changes
  • Content edits when nobody in-house has time
  • Quarterly speed and link check with a short written report
  • Unused hours roll forward one month
Selected work

Three recent projects.

What the business needed, what I delivered, and what changed afterwards — in plain terms.

Printed brand guideline pages and colour swatches laid out across a work table
Fernbank Ceramics · brand + site

A studio that looked smaller than it was.

Hand-thrown tableware sold mostly at fairs, with no home online. We built a wordmark, a warm palette taken from their glazes, and a seven-page site with a stockists page the team updates themselves. Fair enquiries now arrive by email instead of being lost in a notebook.

A desk with a notebook of layout sketches, pencil and a tablet showing a page wireframe

North & Vale Surveyors

Four services buried in one dense page. I split them into separate routes with a short enquiry form on each, and wrote the questions their office actually needs answered before a site visit.

Site rebuild · 4 weeks

Open laptops and notes spread across a shared table during a small workshop session

Lumen Lab Workshops

A small training outfit running six courses a term. They needed a page template they could copy for each new course without calling me, so the build ships with a documented pattern and sample content.

Templates + care plan · ongoing

How a project runs

Four stages, roughly four weeks.

Dates are agreed before anything starts. You will know what is needed from you, and when, at each stage.

Stage one

Call and brief

Forty-five minutes on what the site has to do. You get a written brief, a fixed price and a start date to approve.

Stage two

Shape

Page map, content list and one design direction on the key pages. We settle the structure here, not later.

Stage three

Build

Coded on a staging link you can open any time. Two rounds of changes are included in the quote.

Stage four

Launch and settle

Go live, redirects checked, a short walkthrough recorded for your team, then 30 days of fixes at no cost.

Ways to book

Starting points, not a price list. Every quote is written against your scope.

Half-day reviewWritten notes on an existing site from £240
Day rateDesign or build, booked in pairs of days £520
Launch sprintBrand basics plus a five-page site from £4,800
Monthly careSix hours a month, rolls forward once £390 / mo
Choosing a route

Which one fits?

If you are unsure, send the brief anyway. I will tell you which route is cheapest for what you actually need, including when that means doing less.

  • Pick the reviewYour site works but converts poorly and you want a second opinion before spending.
  • Pick day rateYou have a developer or in-house team and need design or front-end help in short bursts.
  • Pick the sprintYou are starting from an old site or nothing, and want it finished in one go.
  • Add careYour pages change often — courses, stock, seasonal offers — and nobody in-house owns them.
Ask for a quote
Questions

Before you send a brief.

The seven things clients ask on the first call.

Do you quote fixed prices or charge by the day?
Projects with a clear scope are quoted at a fixed price, split into two payments: half at the start, half at launch. Open-ended or exploratory work is day rate, booked in pairs of days so there is enough runway to finish something.
What do you need from me before we start?
A rough list of the pages you expect, any copy or photography you already own, access to your domain and current hosting, and one named person who can approve decisions. Missing copy is normal — we plan around it in stage two.
Who writes the words and sources the photography?
I write structural copy — headings, labels, navigation, form questions — as part of the build. Long-form copy and brand storytelling are better from you or a copywriter I can recommend. I will plan image sizes and crops, and arrange licensed stock if a photoshoot is not in budget.
What happens if the scope changes halfway through?
Small changes get absorbed. Anything that adds a new template, a new integration or a second design direction becomes a short written addition with its own price and date, agreed before work continues. Nothing is invoiced as a surprise.
Do I own the files, and can my team edit the site afterwards?
Yes to both. Source files, fonts licences and the code repository transfer to you at final payment. Editable areas are set up for the content that genuinely changes, and I record a short walkthrough so new staff can pick it up later.
What does the settling window after launch include?
Thirty days of fixes for anything that behaves differently from what we agreed — layout faults, broken forms, browser quirks. New features and new pages are not included; those become care-plan hours or a new quote.
Can you work alongside my existing developer or agency?
Often, yes. I can hand over design files with specifications for someone else to build, or take on front-end work against designs you already have. Say who is involved in your brief so the handover points are clear from the start.
Start a brief

Tell me what the site has to do.

A few lines is plenty. I reply within one working day, in writing, with a direct answer on fit, price range and the earliest start date.

  • Step oneYou send the brief below.
  • Step twoI reply with questions, a price range and dates.
  • Step threeIf it fits, we book a 45-minute call.

Used only to answer your enquiry. No list, no follow-up sequence.