Debonair Events
Website Development & Editorial Writing
Summer 2026
Strengthening Brand Identity Through Digital Experience
About the Project
Client: Debonair Events
Timeline: Summer 2026
My Role: Website Development & Editorial Writing
Debonair Events is a woman-founded and operated event and catering company built around food, hospitality, and community. Founder Rachel Dipalo comes from generations of chefs and built her business on a foundation of her love for cooking and bringing people together.
Rachel hired the Lupine Hammack Creative team to redesign Denoair’s website to create a more cohesive digital brand identity. Our goal was to make the website feel like an extension of Rachel: warm, personal, and inviting. Through visual storytelling and mindfully written copy, we brought Debonair’s personality to life and created a digital experience that felt less like a website and more like an in-person conversation with its founder.
My Role
Website Development
Assisted the creative director with building out and organizing the website pages to create a cohesive, intuitive experience for potential clients.
Editorial Content
Researched and wrote articles to expand Debonair’s brand personality, creating a strong brand voice to emphasize core values and celebrate community moments.
Brand Storytelling
Assisted the creative director in translating Rachel’s personality, background, and philosophy into the website's visual and written language.
Editorial Writing Content
Why We Source Line-Caught Fish
Written to highlight Debonair’s dedication to environmental stewardship and giving back to the community. Discusses the importance of knowing where your food comes from and how community members can support eachother.
Join Us for the Opening Day of Saltbloom Kitchen
A letter written to Rachel’s existing community, thanking them for joining Opening Day of her seasonal popup kitchen located in Stinson Beach, California.
Saltbloom Kitchen Featured in SF Gate
Part of a series sharing other writings about Rachel’s work with her pop-up kitchen and as a community figure.
Curating the Digital Experince
Along with writing about Rachel’s Farm-to-Table values and methodology, I was tasked with picking the Hero Image for the Farm-to-Table section of her website. The image needed to encapsulate the connection to community and earth that was discussed throughout the rest of the page. Leading me to pick an image that was focused on the town Rachel’s kitchen is operated out of and the coastline the farmers she works with call home. Choosing this image allowed me to shift the attention from Rachel’s culinary skills onto her deep-rooted connection to her community.
Choosing the Right Hero Image
Designing the Intentional Copy
The events page of the Debonair website features both the types of events they service and the services they provide during those events. The purpose of the page is to answer customers’ questions before they can ask them, while also expressing Rachel’s personality and values in a subtle way.
For the events section, the copy had to reflect Rachel’s love for bringing people together and creating memorable moments for customers. It also had to explain the range of events she does, making sure each one had the same warm feel to it. The trickiest part was expressing that while keeping the messaging short enough that the customer could understand it at a glance.
After the events section, the services section was where we made Rachel stand out from other caterers. We thought of it as our “Why us” introduction, setting up the rest of the website to make customers want to choose Debonair. Each description had to show the extra care Rachel put into the smaller details of Debonair’s event experience.
Making a Picture Worth a Thousand Words
The Debonair Website features a photo gallery focused on pictures from her community and events. My role was to select and curate the images in order in a way that matched the overall website aesthetic and created a visual representation of Rachel’s values.
Reflecting on My Time With Debonair…
Through the time I spent working with my creative director curating Debonair’s digital experience, I learned the value of small details in building a coherent and cohesive brand voice. Working on articles and copywriting showed me that a visual brand goes far beyond a logo. Visuals are often the first point of connection between a brand and its audience, making the fluidity of web design extremely important. The way a digital space is designed can shape how effectively a brand communicates with its audience and influences how a consumer experiences it. Debonair already had a strong female-founded and community-rooted identity; my role was to highlight those values in a way that separated Debonair Events from other catering and experiential companies in the area.
The overall aesthetic of the website created a strong visual environment, and incorporating a section dedicated to written content gave us the opportunity to make Debonair’s values clear to the customer and give them something deeper to connect with. Throughout the process, learning to uphold a strong brand voice throughout all forms of written language showed me that the consumers' first experience with any brand can ha. Because of this, the most valuable aspect of designing a website is creating a digital space that is accessible, intentional, and aligned with the brand's core values, beliefs, and philosophies.
This experience made clear how important it is to connect strategy, creativity, and content when building a distinctive and memorable visual brand identity.