Every website project has something in common: custom content. Whether it's artists and events for a music festival, thesis projects for a university portfolio, or program listings for a nonprofit, the content always has its own shape. The CMS you build on has to fit that shape — or the whole project fights itself.
Content-first thinking
At MacPhee Design, we start every project by thinking about the content before a single pixel gets designed. What types of content does this organization publish? How do editors need to work with it? How does it connect across pages? Getting those answers right at the start determines everything that follows — the CMS architecture, the template structure, the navigation, and ultimately how easy or frustrating the site will be to maintain.
The right platform for that work depends on the project. For organizations that need a fully custom CMS, scalable architecture, and a build their marketing team can own, Webflow is our platform of choice. For organizations that want a polished, professional site they can manage confidently without a development team, Squarespace is a genuinely strong option — and one we support as a professional Squarespace Partner.
No more lost in translation
One of the biggest advantages of working with MacPhee Design is that design and development happen together. There's no handoff between a designer who doesn't understand CMS architecture and a developer who doesn't think in design systems. What gets approved in the style guide is what gets built. Editors get a site shaped around their real workflow, not a generic template they have to work around.
That integration — strategy, design, content architecture, and build all under one roof — is what makes projects launch faster and stay easier to manage long after the project ends.
If you'd like to talk about your next project, reach out. We're happy to help figure out which platform and approach makes the most sense for your organization.
