Cairney & Company: redesigning the first website we ever built

TwoFifths Design has redesigned and rebuilt the website for Cairney & Company, the global fundraising and advancement consultancy. It is a project that means more to us than most, because Cairney were our first client, and this is the second website we have built for them in ten years.

Ten years, two websites

When a studio takes on its first client, the work matters twice over. It has to be good, and it has to earn the next one. Cairney & Company took a chance on a new studio in Edinburgh, and a decade later they are still with us. The site we built back then did its job for years. Their business had simply outgrown it.

In that time the firm has gone from a UK consultancy to one working with universities and nonprofits across the UK, Australia, China and beyond, with a team of named consultants and a body of case study work to show for it. A site built for a smaller version of the business was holding a bigger one back.

What the new site had to do

Cairney sell judgement. Their clients are vice chancellors, development directors and boards deciding whether to commit to a campaign worth tens of millions. That audience does not respond to volume, it responds to evidence.

So the structure leads with proof. Case studies sit on the homepage rather than buried two levels down, each one naming the institution and the work: Gordonstoun, Deakin University, the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, the Data for Children Collaborative with Unicef. Client testimonials carry the name and job title of the person saying them. Nothing is anonymous.

A design with some confidence in it

The identity leans on a high contrast serif against clean sans body copy, with a magenta that does a lot of work in small amounts. It is a bolder palette than most consultancies would choose, and it suits a firm whose own line is bold thinking, boundless possibilities.

Built on Squarespace 7.1 so the team can add case studies and thinking pieces themselves, which they do regularly. We also ran Squarespace training for their Communications and Projects Coordinator, so the site is genuinely theirs to run rather than ours to maintain.

Why repeat clients are the real measure

Anyone can win a project. Keeping a client for ten years, through a redesign, a growing team and an expanding international business, is a different thing. Most of our work now comes from clients we have had for years, and Cairney were the first of them.

Visit the site: cairneyandcompany.com