Project Summary

Colonese Law is a Connecticut law firm representing individuals in personal injury and workers' compensation matters. The firm was established following the dissolution of Brown Jacobson, where attorney Michael Colonese had led the Plaintiffs Practice Group. The new practice needed its own identity and website while preserving and reorganizing valuable content developed for the previous firm.

My Role

Having previously built the Brown Jacobson parent site and Plaintiffs Practice Group sub-site from another designer's original concept, I was already familiar with the firm's content and audience. For Colonese Law, I took responsibility for the complete visual direction of the new site, including information architecture, website design and WordPress development, as well as creating a new logo and visual identity for the practice.

Design & Development Highlights

The transition presented an opportunity to reconsider how the firm's existing material was organized rather than simply transferring it into a new design. I adapted relevant content from the former practice and developed a clearer structure around Colonese Law's primary areas of personal injury and workers' compensation, with supporting information about the attorneys, case results, client experiences, and legal resources organized into an intuitive navigation system.

Legibility and accessibility were priorities throughout the design. Legal websites often contain substantial amounts of text, and their visitors may be seeking information while dealing with an unfamiliar and stressful situation. I therefore emphasized readable typography, strong contrast, straightforward navigation, and clear visual hierarchy, creating pages that make longer-form legal content easier to scan and understand across screen sizes.

I also created a new logo for the firm, providing Colonese Law with a distinct identity separate from its predecessor organization. The identity was deliberately kept clean and restrained, appropriate for a professional legal practice while providing a consistent visual foundation for the website.

The finished project gave the newly independent practice both continuity and a fresh start: established information and resources could carry forward where useful, while a new brand, clearer content structure, and more approachable visual presentation established Colonese Law as an organization in its own right.