STUDIO JOURNAL
Capturing the Feeling of the North Woods
Defined by its crisp, clean air and vibrant night skies dotted with thousands of stars, the north-woods provide a well of inspiration. Here’s how we redesigned the Watson’s Sand Beach Resort website to capture the feeling of the Wisconsin north-woods.
WEB DESIGN SERVICES
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July 2026
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HOSTED WITH IXIUN
Time has a way of standing still in up-north Wisconsin. We know this because we drive eight hours every summer to vacation at Watson’s Sand Beach Resort, located in Trego, Wisconsin. And time certainly has been standing still at the Watson’s. It’s not just their rustic cabins, built in the 1930s, or the hours that slip by at the beach but also their website that was built in 2013 by iXiun predecessor, DWM. Although charming and adequate for 13 years, it was definitely time for a revamp by 2026. So we took on this website refresh as our first official iXiun project, which makes it especially meaningful to us.
Patty, our Watson’s contact, was thrilled to have us rework her 2013 site. She had a lot of changes in mind when I spoke to her during discovery. Although the site weathered 13 years faithfully for them, there were just many out-of-date details as well as gaps in information relevant to would-be vacationers.
I asked her about her goals for the site. She told me they were booked solid for the summer, and were on track to sell out next summer too. So we knew going in that the goal wasn’t to drive bookings. Instead, the site needed to function more as a showcase piece for the resort, while still being genuinely useful. It should give current vacationers what they need: we scoped out a “Nearby Adventures” page, and made sure to highlight their updated policies. Armed with Patty’s wish list, we left discovery behind and got to work.
Design Direction and Scope
Part of this project was getting our processes defined and practiced. We knew we wanted to give all our clients a project brief and design brief before we started building. A design brief would capture a couple keywords to describe the site as well as typography and color direction. A project brief would describe the requirements we needed to meet before a site was considered “done”.
Project Brief
Patty requested a five page site. So, we wrote them out and created a purpose and plan for each of them.
Home
Hero with the resort’s look and feel, photography, and
clear paths to the resort, cabins, and contact.
Resort
Updated list of amenities, capture atmosphere of the resort, and lead visitors to cabin page
Cabins
This is the heavy lifter and the page new customers are most likely to scrutinize. Clear information, updated pricing
Nearby Adventures
A page to tell the story of the area and give current or potential visitors a list of adventures they can tack onto their trip
Contact
A simple and informative page that gives visitors a method for reaching out to the Watsons
Besides laying out the structure of the site, we also outlined some bigger goals like updating the photography, removing pet pictures altogether (Watsons are moving to a no pet policy), clearly stating resort and the cabin amenities, and publicly post pricing.
Design Brief
One of my favorite part of a project is the design process. The first step I take is putting together a design brief for the client. During discovery I always make sure to ask them about the feeling or adjectives they would use to describe their business. I use those keywords to inform my design choices.
But it’s important to me, and I think clients as well, that they aren’t left in the dark. So, I always put together a list of curated options for them to choose from that are delivered in an easy-to-digest design brief. The Watsons chose fantastic typography and color choices. Playfair Display for headers, which is a serif font with a lot of character and Nunito Sand which is a no-nonsense sans-serif.
OPTION A
A north-woods lake escape.
A private sandy beach, clear water, and a campfire under the stars — family-run on South Twin since 1967.
Cormorant Garamond / Poppins
OPTION B
A north-woods lake escape.
A private sandy beach, clear water, and a campfire under the stars — family-run on South Twin since 1967.
Playfair Display / Nunito Sans
OPTION C
A north-woods lake escape.
A private sandy beach, clear water, and a campfire under the stars — family-run on South Twin since 1967.
Georgia / Jost
OPTION D
Script Accent
A north-woods lake escape.
A private sandy beach, clear water, and a campfire under the stars — family-run on South Twin since 1967.
Yellowtail / Inter
OPTION E
Grotesk
A north-woods lake escape.
A private sandy beach, clear water, and a campfire under the stars — family-run on South Twin since 1967.
Amatic SC / Host Grotesk
OPTION E
Grotesk
A north-woods lake escape.
A private sandy beach, clear water, and a campfire under the stars — family-run on South Twin since 1967.
Oswald / Bitter
— COLOR
Lake and Sand
Beachy
#0E2230
#173A40
#2E6B6E
#E08A3C
#E7D8BE
Campfire
warm & cozy
#2A130A
#B8431F
#E8862E
#2E6B6E
#F2E6D2
Pine
woodsy
#2A130A
#B8431F
#E8862E
#2E6B6E
#F2E6D2
Sky
bright
#2A130A
#B8431F
#E8862E
#2E6B6E
#F2E6D2
The Build
Since this is our first official project under the umbrella of iXiun, the build process was important. We wanted to make sure we created a system that would be repeatable. That meant more work upfront with long-term benefits. Part of that process was making in-house tools that would keep our cost low and cut out some of the fat customer’s feel on invoices.
iXiun-onyx block theme
We evaluated three approaches to building this theme: template/meta-box customization, a classic theme, and a block theme. Meta-boxes gave us the most control but didn’t scale — every content change meant a code change. Classic themes solved that, but WordPress’s own roadmap is moving decisively toward block themes, so that’s where we landed.
Block themes grant access to a panel called the “Editor” where you can set typography for headers, body paragraphs, buttons all in one place, as well as global color schemes, block spacing, and more. Essentially, you can control the look and feel of your site in one localized page. This is powerful and after using it we can see why WordPress is moving in this direction.
We knew we wanted iXiun-onyx to spread across multiple websites, maybe even 100 websites or more. So, we needed a flexible design system. Things were generically named. For example, a css class “content-section” was added that automatically added padding to content with baked in logic to resize for mobile layouts. We specifically left things out that would be organically controlled with the Gutenberg Block Editor that is a cornerstone of WordPress development. This cut down bloat.
For things that were very specific to that site and that site along, for instance a class that would never be used again in other websites, we moved that code to the Editor’s “additional css” page. This kept things clean and tidy, just the way we like it.
What We Avoided
There was some draw at the beginning of the project to use a popular plugin called Elementor. The main feature we liked on this plugin is the fact that you can set mobile rules right in the editor. However, the drawback of paying to add custom css was too great for our purposes. Again, the goal was to keep our bill lean for customers. The WordPress editor allows you to add custom css for free, and any mobile specifications could be handled in the theme stylesheet.
The Results
Intentional Design
We went for a rustic, clean, and airy look. We felt this perfectly captured the atmosphere of the resort. We wanted the first impression to be powerful, so we let a stunning hero image breath on the landing page. No hard lines, just the north-woods sky. The navigation was set to be transparent so it didn’t disrupt the eye. Photos were sourced directly from the Watsons for an authentical feel. Photos were given the “realistic photo” treatment with a white border and a box shadow so they appeared as if they had been placed down on the page.
The Review
Patty herself was thrilled with the result. She said everyone at the Watson’s loved the new look and feel of the website. We hit all our targets outlined in the project brief and created long-term processes along the way that will benefit iXiun clients for years to come.
Check it out yourself at https://watsonssandbeachresort.com!
