case study - The Living RoomA prayer and retreat space built for whoever walks through the door.
The Living Room is a walk-in prayer space in Henniker, NH, founded by Noelle Jones. Four rooms give visitors different ways to pray, whether they've spent a lifetime in church or never once walked into one. Alongside the prayer space, Noelle offers spiritual counseling, spiritual direction, retreat facilitation, and consulting for churches wanting to build a culture of prayer in their congregations.
ClientSector
[ The Challenge ]
The previous site was a generic Weebly template. No brand identity, no photography of the actual space, nothing that told a visitor what it would feel like to walk in. The new site needed to reflect the space and the heart behind the ministry.
[ The Solution ]
We delivered brand identity, site architecture, copywriting, on-site photography and post-production, and a custom Squarespace build, with a room-by-room gallery, on-scroll microinteractions, and on-page SEO built around how people search for a space like this.
[ The Approach ]
The site had to do something the old one didn't: speak to anyone who might walk through the door. The homepage names them one by one: the church-hurt, the simply seeking, the college student carrying more than coursework, the pastor who needs a place apart. Then it lands on two words: for you.
Every room description is grounded in Noelle's own words, pulled from a strategy session and two of her podcast interviews, so the copy sounds like her talking about her own space. A footstep animation and a horizontal-scroll gallery move visitors through the four rooms the way an actual visit unfolds, one room after the next. Brand identity work gave the ministry its own visual identity: logo, wordmark, color palette, and typography built for a walk-in space, where there hadn't been one before.
[ Scope of Work ]
Everything included.
Brand identity system
Logo, wordmark, color palette, typography, mood board, and brand board.
On-site photography
Full Lightroom post-production of the space.
Site architecture
Structure and user flow built around four rooms.
Copywriting
Grounded in a strategy session and two podcast interviews.
SEO foundation
Keyword research, on-page and technical implementation, schema markup.
Custom development
GSAP microinteractions, footstep animation, horizontal-scroll gallery.
Post-launch support
Learning course, sandbox environment, and toolkit page.
"HIGHLY RECOMMEND! My experience working with Rachel from Open Tree Creative was simply outstanding. Rachel is professional, genuine, insightful and extremely creative. She is highly knowledgable about website design, extremely organized and holds to what she tells you she will do. What was most amazing was how genuinely interested she was in capturing who I was and my vision for my organization to design the site in a way that represented it in the best way possible. She listens, she is patient, and everything she does is with excellence. I'm deeply grateful, and I know that if you work with her, you will be too."
Need a site that sounds like the space you've built?
If your website still describes who you used to be, that's exactly the problem I solve.