Finding the right opportunity
not just the right interface
Making Ambition Visible
2025
Helping a specialist executive talent search firm rediscover what made it exceptional and translate that into a brand and digital experience worthy of its ambition.
Working with the leadership team and an external branding agency, I helped uncover the qualities that set the business apart: curiosity, intelligence, and a talent for spotting emerging markets early. Those insights shaped the experience strategy, structure, and interface direction of a digital presence that finally reflected the ambition of the company behind it.
Product Snapshot
Scale
Strategic repositioning for a specialist executive search consultancy
Cross-disciplinary collaboration with leadership and branding partners
Website and brand designed to support future growth
Complexity
Rebuilt momentum after an unsuccessful first design direction
Balanced business strategy, brand positioning, UX and interface design
Aligned diverse stakeholders around a shared vision
Impact
Reset project direction through collaborative workshops
Created a digital presence that reflected the company's expertise and ambition
Strengthened alignment between brand, user experience and business strategy
Highlights
Wenham Carter is a specialist talent executive search firm operating at the forefront of AI, cyber security, climate technology, global competition, and emerging technologies. Despite its reputation and track record, the business felt its brand and digital presence no longer reflected the intelligence, ambition, and curiosity that defined the company internally.
After several attempts failed to capture that identity, I was brought in to help get the project back on track.
The Problem
The challenge wasn't simply redesigning a website.
The company needed a brand and digital experience that matched the calibre of its people, clients, and physical office environment, while differentiating itself in a crowded market increasingly competing on the same language and visual cues.
The answer wasn't hidden in the recruitment industry. It was already inside the business itself: an adventurous, intellectually curious culture built around finding the people capable of shaping entirely new markets.
The website became a strategic business asset, helping communicate the firm's positioning in emerging markets and attracting the calibre of leaders they specialise in placing. The challenge became translating that character into a digital experience.
My Role
I provided strategic, UX, and UI leadership across the project, working closely with the leadership team, internal stakeholders, and an external branding agency.
A large part of my role was restoring momentum and helping the team articulate what made the business genuinely distinctive. Through workshops and collaborative sessions, we aligned around a shared vision before moving into experience strategy and design.
From there, I shaped the information architecture, navigation, wireframes, and interface design, creating a digital experience built around clarity, intelligence, and exploration. The final visual language used transparency and layered glass effects to reinforce the company's ambition to see beyond traditional recruitment and surface the people shaping the future.
The Real Challenge
A company's website should do more than explain what it does. It should communicate why it's different. When a business competes on expertise, relationships, and reputation, the digital experience becomes a strategic expression of the organisation itself, not simply a marketing asset.
The hardest part of many brand projects isn't visual design. It's uncovering the truth that already exists inside an organisation and creating enough alignment for teams to recognise it themselves.
Once that clarity existed, design decisions became significantly easier.
Key Decision
Start with the organisation, not the website.
Instead of refining visual design in isolation, I worked with leadership and branding partners to uncover what genuinely differentiated the business. The digital experience became an expression of the company's ambition, culture and expertise rather than simply a marketing site.
Trade-off
Prioritise strategic clarity over rapid delivery to create a more authentic digital presence.
Traction
Re-established momentum and confidence in a previously stalled project.
Created alignment between leadership, internal teams, and external partners.
Delivered a digital experience that better reflected the company's position in emerging technology markets.
Strengthened an existing relationship with a founder who had previously invested in my own business and returned four years later to work together again.
What this reinforced
This project reinforced that strategy, brand, and product design are often solving the same problem from different directions.
The website wasn't the outcome. It was the expression of a clearer understanding of who the company already was.
Sometimes the most valuable thing a designer can do isn't create something new. It's actively listening and helping an organisation recognise and articulate what made it special in the first place.
Results
Re-establishing momentum
Driving clarity & alignment
Reflecting intelligence
Delivering a digital experience
