Case study · Perdita Felicien
Perdita Felicien
A personal website design for Olympian, author and TV personality Perdita Felicien, bringing her athletic career, memoir and speaking work together.
01 — Context
A personal brand website for an Olympian
Perdita Felicien is one of Canada's best-known track and field athletes — a two-time Olympian in the 100m hurdles who grew up in Pickering, Ontario — and her career had moved well beyond the track. She was a TV personality, a public speaker and the author of an upcoming memoir, My Mother's Daughter.
She needed a website that could support all of it: her athletic career, the book release and her broadcasting and speaking work. The challenge for our personal brand website design was to hold several identities in one place without it feeling like a scrapbook, and to make it easy for event organizers and media to reach her.
02 — Voice & look
Bold type, bright colour, her own words
Perdita writes with a warm, direct voice, so the site speaks in the first person. The homepage leads with "Can you believe I used to hate the hurdles?" beside a cut-out photo of her in red and white track kit, medals around her neck. It is an invitation to read on rather than a list of credentials.
We paired a high-contrast display serif for headlines with a clean geometric sans for body copy and navigation, and set everything on generous white space. Colour comes from a hand-painted botanical illustration in green, red, pink and magenta that tucks into the top-right corner of every page, with magenta and emerald green pulled out for quotes, buttons and calls to action.
The athletic career page tells her story in two columns, then breaks into a full-width grid of black-and-white competition photographs. Below, a tabbed panel — Personal Bests, Career Highlights, NCAA, Championships, Awards & Recognition — keeps a long list of achievements organized, with personal bests shown as bold magenta circles.
03 — Speaking & contact
Pages built to get her booked
Speaking is a core part of Perdita's work, so the speaker page is designed to convert. It opens with a magenta pull quote — "I believe everyone is a hurdler — even if they don't know it." — then moves into a black panel with stage photographs and her experience as a keynote speaker, emcee and panel moderator, linking through to her memoir.
A magenta band asks event planners directly if they want to team up, followed by a simple "Book now." section and a wall of client logos in soft grey. The contact page keeps things short: name, email, phone, a reason-for-contacting dropdown and a message box, followed by a green call-to-action band and a strip of personal photographs.
Each page ends with a clear next step, the same principle we use in storytelling through web design: let the story build, then make the action obvious.
04 — The result
One home for every chapter
The design gives Perdita a single place for her athletic legacy, her book, her news and events, and her speaking business, with navigation that keeps About, Book, Athletic Career, News, Events and Contact one click away. The layout system of white space, bold serif headlines and painted botanicals can stretch to new pages as her work grows.
If you are building a site around a personal brand, sport or performance, see also our websites for Toronto Football Club and C-Unit Studio.
What we delivered
A personal website design for Perdita Felicien.
