The Worshipful Company of Plaisterers

The Plaisterers’ Company is a London trade guild which was founded to regulate the quality of plastering in London and support the welfare of plasterers. The company now works as a charity, raising funds through its members for charitable causes.

Naked Creativity worked with The Worshipful Company of Plaisterers to develop a more dynamic website, with a polished image, simplified navigation and clearer content. Being an organisation formed around membership, the team was also able to support the development of a new members’ area using Naked Creativity’s own membership management system.

As a London trade guild steeped in tradition, the Plaisterers’ wanted a website that echoed its history, but presented itself as the modern and forward-thinking company it is today. The previous website was clean and corporate in image but appeared quite heavy, with dark colour blocks of content creating a formal style. Working closely with the Plaisterers’ team, Naked’s designers refined a colour palette which was lighter and brighter, while complimenting the company crest. This helped create a fresh, modern feel to the website, which worked well with the high quality images supplied by the Plaisterers’.

Content was also a key area to be improved as part of the site refresh. The website had two main audiences; the general public who would want to learn about the Plaisterers’ Company and how to book Plaisterers’ Hall as a venue; and for members to keep up to date with the organisation. The previous website had content duplicated in places, so the Plaisterers’ were keen to simplify the navigation process to make information more accessible. Their team had already planned a possible navigation structure, and Naked Creativity were able to help refine this further using their own experience and insight.

To keep future updates easy for the Plaisterers’ team, the website was built on Naked’s own content management system, Cee.ms, which has been designed for ease of use by non-technical users. It uses the latest web-standards, to work responsively across mobile and desktop devices. Once the site had been populated with the content supplied, Naked provided training for Cee.ms so the client could manage all future content updates themself and a full user guide was also provided as additional support.

Members' Area

As a membership organisation, Plaisterers’ wanted a purpose-designed area for its members where they could log in to book and pay for events, make donations and shop purchases, as well as administrative functions such as managing their membership, GDPR settings and profile, or to access the members directory. The members’ area was built on Naked’s membership management system, Memb.rs, which provides a secure, password-protected platform which can be customised to suit the client. The adaptability of the system was particularly appealing to The Plaisterers’ Company, as features are easy to add on in the future as the company develops.

The members’ area was designed as a continuation of the Plaisterers’ website in terms of colour and image, and Naked Creativity’s team created the functionality required for its members. All emails generated within the members area were customised with the Plaisterers’ crest and colour scheme. Naked’s technical team managed the process of importing membership data into the system and set up members with login details for the new system.

Once the new website was populated and ready to go, Naked Creativity assisted with web hosting to launch the site. The client is delighted with the final result and plans to work with Naked Creativity in the future for further development plans.