Booking now
Two project slots left for the February–March window. Larger builds are going into April. Send a brief
Freelance web design & front-end build
I'm Rowan Vey. Common Yonder is my one-person studio: I design and build marketing sites for independent brands, consultancies and small product teams. Fixed scope, fixed fee, written before anyone starts work — and no retainer attached to the end of it.
How the work runs
“Most sites I'm asked to rescue weren't built badly. They were decided badly — in a meeting, with no one responsible for the sentence at the top of the page.”
So I start with the decisions: who the page is for, what it has to get them to do, and which three things actually need saying. Then I design in the browser, build it by hand, and hand over something a non-technical person can keep up to date without me.
One person scopes the work, draws it, writes the code and answers your emails. Nothing gets lost on the way to a developer, because there isn't a way to one.
The proposal lists the pages, the rounds of review and the launch week. If you change your mind about scope we re-price it openly rather than quietly adding hours.
Hand-written HTML and CSS, no plugin stack to maintain, and a short written handover so the site keeps working in year three without a monthly invoice.
Rate card
Six ways to work with me. Fees are fixed on signature, not estimated, and they assume one decision-maker on your side. If what you need isn't here, describe it in the enquiry and I'll tell you whether it's a job for me.
£1,800
A single scrolling page of up to six sections for a new venture, a service line or an event. The fastest route from “we have nothing” to something you can send to a client.
£4,200
Five to eight pages — home, services, about, a case or two, contact — with a structure that holds up when you add to it later. The usual choice for consultancies and studios.
£2,400
Page designs, type and colour system, and component states, documented so your own developers can build from them without guessing. No build, no surprises at QA.
£2,000
You have the design settled and need it built properly: hand-coded, responsive at the sizes your visitors actually use, keyboard-usable, and fast on a weak connection.
£950
A two-week sprint on a site you already have: fix what's broken on phones, cut the page weight, repair the forms, and leave you a list of what I'd change next and why.
£520 / day
For changes after launch, a short run of extra pages, or sitting alongside your team for a week. Booked in whole or half days, invoiced at the end of the month.
Terms in short. Half the fee on signature, half on launch. Fees exclude VAT where it applies, plus any hosting, font licence or stock photography you choose to buy. Quotes hold for thirty days.
Process
Projects slip for one of two reasons: the scope moved, or the client ran out of time to answer. This is the schedule I work to, with your side of it written down.
01
You send the enquiry form. I read it properly and reply with either a direct answer on fit and rough cost, or two or three questions I need answered before I can give you one.
Ten minutes and an honest budget band.
02
Forty-five minutes on a call, then a proposal listing pages, review rounds, the fee and the launch week. Nothing starts until you've signed that and the first half is settled.
Whoever can approve the spend on the call.
03
We agree the page order and the point of each section before any pixels move. I'll draft headings and section copy from your material; you correct the facts and the tone.
Existing copy, photography, and one round of edits within three days.
04
You review real pages on a private link, on your own phone, rather than flat images that hide every awkward breakpoint. Comments go in one shared list per round.
Consolidated feedback — one list, not four forwarded emails.
05
Final build, a pass on phones and keyboards, forms tested end to end, then launch on the agreed day. Thirty days afterwards, small fixes are on me.
Domain access, and a sign-off the day before launch.
Field notes
What the problem actually was, the decision that mattered, and what the site does differently now. Client names are shortened at their request.
Ecology consultancy · small marketing site
Ceramics studio · one-page launch site
Sailing school · rescue pass
Fit check
A solo studio is a narrow tool. It is excellent for some jobs and genuinely wrong for others, and it costs us both less to find that out now.
Questions
Usually four to eight weeks. Rescue passes can sometimes start sooner because they're shorter and don't need a design stage. The notice bar at the top of this page is updated whenever a slot moves, so it's the honest answer rather than a sales line.
A clear idea of what the site must achieve, one decision-maker, whatever copy and photography you already have, and access to your domain. If you don't have photography we'll decide early whether to licence stock or budget for a shoot — it changes the design, so it isn't a late decision.
I shape it; you own the facts. I'll draft headings and section copy from your notes, interviews and existing material, then you correct anything that misrepresents the work. If you need a specialist copywriter I'll say so rather than pretend otherwise — long-form writing isn't in these fees.
If the delay is mine, the fee doesn't change. If it's caused by scope being added mid-project, I stop, price the addition in writing, and you decide whether it's worth it. If feedback stalls for more than three weeks the slot may move to the next opening, which I'll always warn you about first.
Yes. Text, images and page content are editable without touching code, and the handover note shows you how in plain language. Structural changes — new section types, new page templates — are day-rate work, because that's where people tend to break things.
No. I'll work carefully with an identity you already have, and I'm happy to recommend people who do this properly. A website is a bad place to invent a logo under deadline pressure.
You own the hosting account and pay for it directly — typically a modest annual amount for a site this size, plus your domain. I'll set it up and leave the keys with you. There's no mandatory maintenance plan; day-rate work is available if and when you want it.
Enquire
Rough is fine. A paragraph about the business and what the site has to achieve is more useful to me than a tidy specification.