A good chunk of my portfolio is work nobody paid me for. I picked brands I love and rebuilt their websites on my own, start to finish, with no one asking me to.
It sounds like a strange way to spend my time. It's also some of the most useful work I do.
What a concept redesign actually is
A concept redesign is me taking a real brand I admire and building the website I think it deserves. I'm not hired and I'm not affiliated, and I say so clearly every time. On my portfolio, every one of these is labeled "concept, unofficial, not affiliated." I would never present one as real client work.
I choose the brand, I choose the direction, and I build the whole thing to my own standard. No brief to follow, no rounds of "can you make the logo bigger?"
Why I bother
A few reasons.
I get to build in the niche I love, right now. I have plenty of client work. What I don't always have is a client in the exact corner I care about most, animal brands and women-led businesses. Concept redesigns let me build that body of work today, instead of waiting for the perfect brand in that niche to come find me.
It keeps my taste sharp. When I build for a brand I love, I care more. I notice the small things. I try the risky layout instead of the safe one. That kind of care is easy to lose between projects, and concept work is how I keep mine up.
It shows how I think, not just what I ship. A finished client site shows the result. A concept redesign shows my reasoning: why this hero, why this order, why this word instead of that one. For someone deciding whether to hire me, how I think is often the more useful thing to see.
How I pick a brand
I'm picky, and it usually comes down to one feeling: this brand has heart, and its website isn't doing it justice.
I'm drawn to animal brands and women-led businesses most. Dog trainers, rescues, pet hotels, coaches, small product brands run by women who built something real. That's the work I care about, and where I do my best thinking. It isn't a hard rule, I've reimagined other kinds of brands too, but that's the work I keep coming back to.
The other thing I look for is a brand people clearly love, sitting behind a website that feels generic, slow, or years out of date. That mismatch is the whole reason to do the redesign. If the site already did the brand justice, there'd be nothing for me to add.
Positive Way Animals, a dog training and pet hotel where my own dogs actually trained. I reimagined their site because I love the place. See the concept →
What I get from having no client
Working with no client is the part people underestimate.
Real client projects are a balance, and rightly so. There's a budget, a deadline, and a real business on the line, so we weigh every choice together, and sometimes the safe option is the right one. That's good work, and I like doing it.
A concept has none of that on the line. Nobody's money or timeline is at stake, so I can try the version I'd love to see and follow an idea as far as it goes, just to find out what's possible. A lot of what I learn there quietly makes my client work better too.
One thing I won't skip, though. A concept isn't an excuse to build something pretty and hollow. I hold these to the same standard as client work: fast, accessible, responsive, built properly underneath. I'm a software engineer, so a portfolio piece that looked nice but fell apart the moment you looked closely would embarrass me, and it would undercut the whole point of showing my work. If I'm going to say "this is how I build," it has to be true even when nobody's paying.
A concept for Catherine Farquharson, a women's coach. See the concept →
Why I always label it
You've seen the other version. The agency site with a wall of famous logos and a vague "worked with" that could mean anything, from a real project to a two-week trial. It's built to make you trust them before they've shown you why.
Concept work is the opposite, as long as you're upfront about it. I never imply a brand hired me. Every concept is labeled as unofficial and not affiliated, plainly, where you can't miss it. What you're seeing is real work, presented as exactly what it is: my take on a brand I love, not a client relationship dressed up to look like one.
That's what makes it worth showing. You can look at a concept and know exactly what it proves: I can take a brand, understand it, and build it something good. Nothing faked, nothing implied.
If it's your brand
Every now and then, the brand I've reimagined is one you own.
If that's you, and you like what you see, I'd love to talk. I promise it isn't a weird sales thing. I built it because I admire what you've made, and if my version is close to something you'd actually want, just get in touch and we'll take it from there.
And if it's not your brand, I hope it's still useful to see how I think about this work. 🐾