Architecture & Interiors

Graaft Studio, a brand and web design studio in Perth and Johannesburg, designs and builds websites for architecture and interior design practices, with a new logo and identity where a practice needs one. Its website for Veld Architects launched in 2020, and in 2024 the African Property Awards named it the best architecture website in South Africa.

What the studio makes for a practice

A website, a brand, or both. They are two services, Web Design and Branding, and a practice can brief either on its own. The website covers the pages your projects need, the words on each, the design for a phone and a desktop, and the build, launched on your own domain. The brand covers a logo, typefaces, colours and a tone of voice, with guidelines your team can follow. You get the finished site and the finished files. The working files stay with the studio.

How the work runs

A website takes four steps.

1. Brief. We take your brief and map the site, starting with which projects lead and how a visitor gets from one to the next.
2. Words. We write each project’s page, or edit the words you have, and pick the lines that stay.
3. Pages. We design the pages around your photographs and code them side by side, then refine both until they match.
4. Sign-off. Will and Dave check every page, sign it off and launch it on your domain.

A brand runs Brief, Direction, Design and Sign-off. Where a practice takes both, the site is designed in the new brand.

A studio that has shown buildings before

Most business websites are built around services, with a page for each and a contact form. A practice’s site is built around finished work, so the questions are which project opens it, how large each photograph shows on a phone, and how a visitor gets from one house to the next. A studio that has answered those for a practice before can show you the site. Ask to see it on a phone.

What an architect’s website needs

Three things most business sites don’t.

• Photographs at full width. Veld’s site gave each finished house its own page, opening on a full-width photograph, with the thinking behind it further down.
• A way through the work. A page per project, and an index that follows how the practice works: David Muirhead & Associates’ site had one each for homes, hotels, offices and exhibitions.
• Credentials where a client looks for them: awards, press and, for an architect, the registration a client can check with SACAP in South Africa or the state’s architects board in Australia. David Muirhead’s site gave its press a page of its own, filed by date.

What to ask before you brief a studio

The risk is a site that hides the work: finished projects three clicks from the home page, or project pages of photographs with no words for Google to read. Before you brief a studio, ask it three things.

1. Can we see a practice’s site you designed, on a phone?
2. Does the same team design the site and build it?
3. Who checks every page before it goes live?

Veld Architects and David Muirhead

Veld Architects designs sustainable homes. Its site was judged South Africa’s best architecture website in 2024.

David Muirhead & Associates designs interiors, from homes to hotels and offices. Its book was designed first, then a website that followed the book’s pages: a full page of image, then a short caption. From 2014, a client weighing up the practice could walk through its work online, area by area.

• Veld ArchitectsWeb & Code
• David MuirheadWeb & Code + Design

Who signs it off

Will Derman designed and built both sites. Today specialist AIs draft each piece, one craft each, and Will and Dave refine it and sign it off: Will from Johannesburg, Dave from Perth.

Questions

Do you work with practices in Perth as well as South Africa?

Yes. Dave Derman works from Perth and Will Derman from Johannesburg, and the studio designs for practices in Australia and South Africa. Every brief goes to both of them, wherever it comes from.

Is it a template, or designed for our practice?

Designed for your practice. The site is coded from its design, then each page is measured against it, spacing and line breaks included, on a phone as on a desktop.

Can you design our brand as well as the website?

Yes. Branding and Web Design are separate services, and a practice can take either or both. If your logo and colours still work, we’ll tell you whether a refresh or new rules will do.

Can we add new projects ourselves after launch?

Yes, if you’d like to. We can build the site on a content management system (CMS), and you then add a finished project, its photographs and its words, yourself.

Do you work with interior designers, or only architects?

Both. David Muirhead & Associates, an interior design practice, had its book and website designed by Will Derman, with its hotels, homes and offices each given an index of their own.

Send a brief

A few lines will do: the practice, the projects you’d lead with, and whether you need a new site, a new brand or both. Will and Dave read every brief themselves and reply within two working days.