Acari Farm Kitchen & Website
When Candi and Rick came to me in 2024, they were looking for a professional and beautiful brand for the winery they had recently purchased. Their new vineyard sat on a historic (and famous!) piece of property, in the lovely countryside of New Hampshire. Together, we developed a brand identity that brought their vision to life. We leaned into the property itself for inspiration, drawing from the rustic farmhouse and calming colors. You can see the portfolio post for that project here: Gilmanton Winery.
Fast forward a year, they had renovated the property and even opened a restaurant on the property! I had the opportunity to work with Candi and Rick again, this time to design a logo for their restaurant, Acari Farm Kitchen, and develop a new Squarespace website where they could continue to expand their business.
the brief
The goal of Gilmanton Winery is to create a welcoming community that makes visitors feel valued and at home, as they seek a place that allows them to find peace in their busy lives and careers. Part of their mission is to offer a warm environment, along with great wine paired with amazing food, a vineyard that will invite visitors to explore and embrace the beauty of the land. They strive to provide a place where people feel like family and enjoy the simple pleasures of life, and hope to eventually open a bed & breakfast in addition to the venue, vineyard, and restaurant!
We already had a brand vision board to follow for the restaurant, as it would operate much the same at the vineyard design-wise. For the logo itself, we wanted to create something very similar to Gilmanton’s main logo, but with a separate twist. This logo would appear on select pages of the website, and on menus, marketing, etc.
The website needed to include all necessary information, as well as be easy to navigate, professional, and make contacting the winery easy.
Acari Farm Kitchen
Here, I drew a new logo for Acari Farm Kitchen that incorporated a beautiful barn onsite. This concept helped bring the ‘farm’ side of the restaurant to life, and kept within the brand parameters of the winery as a whole. This logo will be used for marketing materials, the new website, and any print materials needed for the restaurant.
the website
The website design for Gilmanton Winery was intuitive and lovely. Thanks to all of the lovely food, wine, and environment photos by Melissa Neal Photography, I was able to incorporate lots of beautiful imagery into this website.
I had the fun challenge of using alternate logos on certain pages of the winery website, such as using the Acari Farm Kitchen logos on its specific pages, and using various colors from the brand design to match that page’s themes.
Squarespace’s built-in animations added some shiny flair to this website, and I was able to incorporate some fun overlapping elements between sections on pages.
I absolutely love when a client trusts me to design a fresh new website for them, and seeing this one come to life has been truly lovely.