Capture & Keep redesign
Thirteen designs, numbered 1 to 13, so it is easy to say which you like. Six concepts, most in up to three versions: the round-one original, a version brought back to the live Capture & Keep colours, and a more ambitious development.
Under every design there is a notes box: mark it Love it, Maybe or Not for me, tick the parts you like, and write anything you want. Notes save as you type.
The short answer: the strongest designs are the developments. The best individual design is number 9, The Living Tree, with number 3, The Kept Book, a very close second. Review and recommendation ↓
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Nothing marked yet. Under every design there is a notes box: choose Love it, Maybe or Not for me, tick the parts you like, and add anything you want to say.
Design 1: Typeset Original
Design 2: Typeset, original colours Original colours
Design 3: The Beautifully Kept Book Development
Design 6: Chapters Original
Design 7: Chapters, original colours Original colours
Design 8: Britain Through the Decades DevelopmentA1
The development version is clearly the strongest, and the strongest all-rounder on the board. Bringing the original to the live colours made it calmer and friendlier but changed little else. The Kept Book is a different and better idea: the finished book is the hero, and 'Make it theirs' puts the visitor's own person on the cover.
Design 1 Original
Letterpress proofs and a type specimen: the year set inside the name.
#F3EDE1#1F1B17#A3271FThe year winds back inside the wordmark; set a year, place and name of your own.
The best typography of round one and the most personal moment.
Quiet; little atmosphere; reads like any fine publisher.
Design 2 Original colours
The same proofs, printed in ink and the live green on ivory; red becomes a restrained oxblood.
#FBF8F2#557267#435C53#8C3B34As the original, plus Amanda on the first screen. New mark: a printer's device with a book ribbon between C and K.
Warmer, and clearly Capture & Keep. The ribbon device is a good mark.
Barely different from the original apart from colour.
Design 3 Development
The finished book is the hero: a clothbound cover you can open and turn, with wood-engraved chapter heads and decade endpapers.
#FBF8F2#2F463E#7A2632#D8BD84Open the book and turn its pages; 'Make it theirs' puts a name, year and place on the cover, spine and title page and changes the endpapers to that decade.
The most complete system on the board, and it sells the actual product. The /stories page as three book openings with margin notes is the best inner page.
The ribbon logo is slight; the wood engravings are generated and a little mechanical.
A2
Both versions keep the charming tin. The original-colour version is the warmer and friendlier of the two and fits the brand far better; the original is darker and more dramatic.
Design 4 Original
A lamp-lit family tin you can lift things out of.
#1E130D#1E3B2F#9C421ALift an object; its card turns over to a question and a line of the sample passage.
Teaches Amanda's method; tactile and memorable.
Dark and a little cute.
Design 5 Original colours
Ivory and heritage green, with the walnut kept only under the open tin.
#FBF8F2#557267#2A1B13#E9D0CDThe tin, unchanged. New mark: a key whose loop is a C and whose cut end is a K.
The friendliest page on the board; the tin still delights.
Lost some drama; the drawn objects are still flat.
A3
The development version is a big improvement. The original-colour version is the weakest step on the board: toning the decades down took away what made the original exciting without fixing its busyness. Through the Decades keeps one calm brand and lets the photographs age instead, which is the right idea.
Design 6 Original
A life in decades, each dressed in its period's design.
#4E5536#2F5470#3A2234#8E3B12The era shift; three paperbacks; the tap-to-build question list.
Energy and colour; the most useful questions page.
Busy; five styles dilute one brand. (A block on its inner page runs off the right edge; left unfixed because round one is frozen.)
Design 7 Original colours
A fixed ivory-and-green frame with the decades toned into the palette.
#FBF8F2#557267#5D6745#7A2E2AAs the original. New mark: five books on a shelf in an arch.
One brand now; Amanda on the first screen; inner-page overflow fixed.
Quieter decades, same busyness: the weakest of the thirteen on beauty.
Design 8 Development
One calm frame; only the photographs change, aged the way each decade's prints really aged (box camera, deckle edge, square colour, 1970s fade).
#FBF8F2#557267#34483F#D7E2D3Five prints along a timeline in the hero; each fades up as you reach it. Gifts has a milestone finder: enter a birth year and see the birthdays and real events of their life (all eleven checked).
The idea finally feels like discovering a person, not a museum; the milestone finder is a real gift-buying tool.
Below the decades the sections are conventional; the drawn figures are simple.
B1
The best design on the board. Real 1820s oak etchings from Jacob Strutt's Sylva Britannica (licensed and credited) make it beautiful rather than clever, and the engraved acorn is the best logo here.
Design 9 Development · Best on the board
One oak stands for one life: roots where it starts, boughs for the turns it took, the family resting in its shade. Real 1822 to 1826 etchings, keyed like a botanical plate.
#FBF8F2#1F3A2B#7B2D2C#B08A3ETen numbered pins on the oak; each opens a moment with a ring count and a small Ordnance-Survey-style map (invented place, labelled). On Pricing, the acorn, oak and grove become the three ways to work with Amanda.
The most beautiful and the most memorable page on the board; the image is real, not generated; the engraved acorn logo is the best mark of the thirteen.
FAQ and price cards are conventional; the page is heavy (about 1.6 MB of images).
B2
The development version is strongest of the three and the most emotional page on the board, with figures redrawn after the Luttrell Psalter and a 'Kalendar' of ordinary 1940s to 1970s life. But it sits furthest from the live brand and is the hardest to carry across 41 practical pages without tipping into costume. The original-colour version shows the book still works in the live palette.
Design 10 Original
Kings had chroniclers. Your family has Amanda.
#F4ECDB#8E2B1E#1F3478#B8913FA book whose pages turn as you scroll.
The best line of round one; the drawn miniature.
Lapis and red are far from the live brand; doll-like figures.
Design 11 Original colours
Green bookcloth and ivory, with burgundy and aged gold as the rubrication.
#FBF8F2#557267#7B2D3B#A8894EThe turning book, plus an oxblood ribbon; inner-page plate bug fixed. New mark: a Lombardic C holding a cup of tea.
Shows the chronicle idea survives in the live palette.
Same doll-like figures; closest to its sibling versions.
Design 12 Development
The Luttrell Psalter painted ordinary working people in a lord's book. This does the same for lives within living memory.
#F2E8D3#1E3A2B#6E1D24#B58C3CThe Kalendar of an ordinary life: seven illuminated leaves (wash day, first job, Saturday night, a new pram, the seaside, now: the telling), each paired with the real question that opens it.
The most emotional and the most richly illustrated page; the idea is unforgettable.
Furthest from the live brand; lower half is boxed pages; risk of costume on practical pages.
B3
Drops the radio-station look and shows the real heart of the service, talk becoming a written page and a kept book, in one drawing. Its recording guide is the best practical inner page on the board.
Design 13 Development
Said, written, kept: a reel-to-reel's tape flattens into the lines of a page, and the page becomes a book.
#FBF8F2#557267#435C53#6B4227The spoken words light along the tape and the kept ones settle on the written page; the asides ('well', 'you know') are left behind. The recording guide is set as an instruction booklet with a room plan and a working checklist.
Shows the service working better than any other page; the recording guide is excellent.
Hero is still text left, drawing right; the equipment is drawn from memory, not reference.
Five designs were removed on 8 October (Adam's call), so thirteen remain. I compared them from rendered screenshots at 1440 and 390 and from using the interactions.
| Version | Beauty | Originality | Fits the C&K brand | Emotion | Typography | Illustration and photography | Identity | Interaction | Mobile | Service clarity | Works across the site | Distinct from others | Total /60 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design 1Typeset, original | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 40 |
| Design 2Typeset, original colours, original colours | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 44 |
| Design 3The Beautifully Kept Book, development | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 52 |
| Design 4The Kept Box, original | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 43 |
| Design 5Kept Box, original colours, original colours | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 46 |
| Design 6Chapters, original | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 39 |
| Design 7Chapters, original colours, original colours | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 40 |
| Design 8Britain Through the Decades, development | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 47 |
| Design 9The Living Tree, development | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 52 |
| Design 10The Ordinary Chronicle, original | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 45 |
| Design 11Chronicle, original colours, original colours | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 46 |
| Design 12The Grand Chronicle, development | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 50 |
| Design 13Voices Through Time, development | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 49 |
Number 9, The Living Tree. It is the most beautiful page on the board, the image is real rather than generated, the idea (one oak as one life, kept for the people in its shade) could only belong to Capture & Keep, and its engraved acorn is the best logo here. Number 3, The Beautifully Kept Book, is a very close second and the more complete system: if 'it sells the actual product' matters more than 'it is unforgettable', choose that one.
Take number 9, The Living Tree, forward, with number 3's finished book as its product moment. The Grand Chronicle (number 12) is the most emotional page, but it sits furthest from the live brand and is the hardest to carry across practical pages without becoming costume.
If the aim is to stay closest to the current site, number 5 (Kept Box in the original colours) is the warmest familiar option. The decision is yours.
Static design concepts, one inner page per version. Not checked: Safari, Firefox, real phones, tablet widths, screen readers. Several logos still need their lettering turned into outlines. Example lives, spoken passages and objects are invented and labelled; Amanda would write real ones. Most photographs are still licensed stock stand-ins. The chosen direction gets rebuilt in the real Astro site on a separate branch before anything goes near captureandkeep.co.uk.