Louisiana’s Culinary Trails

The Louisiana's Culinary Trails website aims to promote tourism by showcasing the state's rich culinary heritage. In preparation for "The Year of Food," the client sought a complete overhaul of the existing site to align with the successful tone and aesthetic of the previously designed Louisiana Libations website. The primary challenge with the current Culinary Trails site was its bland and static nature, resulting in low user engagement and a lack of personalization.

My approach to this redesign was to seamlessly integrate the typography and color palette established in the Louisiana Libations website, creating a cohesive brand experience. However, the focus shifted towards creating an engaging and interactive experience that authentically showcases Louisiana's diverse cuisine. The redesigned website provides users with inspiring itinerary ideas, encouraging them to explore the state's culinary treasures and embark on their own delicious adventures.

Mood-Board

Facing a tight deadline, I presented a low-fidelity mood board to the client. This board showcased the project's foundational elements: the brand's established typography and color palette, along with a proposed illustration style to vividly represent Louisiana's unique ingredients.

My goal was to create a website that evoked the warm and inviting atmosphere of a home-cooked meal. This involved incorporating playful and inviting illustrations that not only celebrated Louisiana's culinary heritage but also instilled a sense of nostalgia, connecting users to the rich history of Louisiana cuisine.

Furthermore, I outlined a design system utilizing reusable card components and button styles to ensure a consistent and engaging user experience across the entire website.

Landing Page

My initial task involved a comprehensive assessment and redesign of the Landing Page. During the kickoff meeting, the client emphasized the importance of prominently showcasing their most celebrated recipes, aiming to significantly enhance user engagement through exciting interactive elements.

With this directive in mind, I collaborated closely with my project manager to develop a compelling narrative for the user experience. We sought to create a warm and inviting atmosphere, drawing inspiration from the imagery of farm tables and family-style picnics. To achieve a balance between uniqueness and reusability, we decided to make the hero component the sole point of unique interaction, while the remaining components would be adaptable for use throughout the website.

Leveraging the power of Adobe Firefly, Illustrator, Figma, and Photoshop, I developed an interactive hero component that dynamically presents LA's iconic dishes as the user scrolls. These visually appealing dishes are clickable, seamlessly guiding users to a dedicated "Iconic Dish" landing page.

Beneath the hero section, we incorporated "farm table cards" alongside visually engaging illustration blocks. These elements, which can be easily updated by the client, effectively highlight key information such as featured restaurants, trails, and local markets. Finally, we utilized a consistent card style, previously established in the Libations project, to present engaging calls-to-action for relevant trip planning articles and resources.

Recipe/Iconic Dish Page

Following the successful design of the Landing Page, I shifted my focus to revamping the existing Recipes page and creating a dedicated page for Louisiana's Iconic Dishes. Building upon the established intro paragraph component and illustrative elements, I aimed to create a Recipes page that evoked the nostalgic feel of a cherished family recipe book. To achieve this, I incorporated hand-drawn lines around the recipe cards, ensuring their versatility and potential for future use across other client microsites with minimal CSS adjustments.

After careful deliberation with the client and my project manager, we decided to enhance the user experience by initially displaying only six iconic dishes on the page, with an engaging "Show More" call-to-action encouraging users to explore the full list. Drawing inspiration from the mood board, I redesigned the YouTube embedded video player, replacing the bold golden yellow with a softer, warmer tone and incorporating a dynamic slider, similar to the one implemented in the Libations project, adorned with playful hand-drawn carrots. To maintain visual consistency, we retained the article cards and planning resources at the bottom of the page.

For the new Iconic Dish Landing Page, I leveraged many of the successful components from the Landing Page and Recipes Page while introducing key customizations to distinguish this page. This included a customized header prominently featuring the featured dish, as displayed on the Landing Page, and the integration of engaging illustration blocks within the user-generated content section. Furthermore, I updated the illustrations to showcase key ingredients commonly found in Louisiana cuisine, effectively telling the story of the state's rich culinary heritage.

Experiences Page

The final phase of the project involved redesigning the Experiences Page. Leveraging the majority of components previously developed for other pages, my primary focus shifted to redesigning the search grid and partner cards located at the bottom of the page.

Building upon the filter design successfully implemented in the Libations project, I updated the color palette to seamlessly integrate with the visual identity of the Culinary Trails site. Recognizing the potential for this grid to be utilized across multiple microsites, I introduced a significant enhancement: the ability for users to toggle between map and grid views.

To address the numerous filter options, I introduced concise filter tags to enhance usability and improve the overall user experience. For the partner cards, I implemented an opaque feature tag to visually distinguish sponsored partners. To ensure visual consistency, I proposed the use of fallback images for non-sponsored partners, maintaining a cohesive and professional aesthetic throughout the site.

Finally, the pagination system was retained from the Libations project, with the active state indicators updated to match the refined color palette of the Culinary Trails site.

Conclusion

Despite the challenging deadlines associated with this web launch, it presented a valuable opportunity for strong collaboration not only with the client but also with our development team and my project manager to successfully bring this vision to life.

Building upon the positive reception of the Libations website redesign, the Culinary Trails project benefited from a smoother design process. This shared understanding facilitated the creation of a seamless synergy between food and drink experiences, reflecting the broader Louisiana tourism narrative.

Recognizing Louisiana's adventurous spirit and its eagerness to embrace innovative approaches, we were confident that the redesigned website would resonate with the client. Indeed, they expressed immense satisfaction with the final product upon its successful launch. Check it out here!