Website Redesign & Shareholders Platform for Historic Hawaiʻi Land Company

W.H. Shipman, Limited is one of Hawaiʻi Island's most significant private landowners, managing agricultural lands, conservation areas, and real estate developments across the Big Island since 1882, along with two properties in Oregon. When I met Kimo Lee, their Director of Development, at Kīholo during a surf session, we connected over sandwiches, jokes, waves, and slippahfish I'd brought to share. I'd seen their website recently and knew they needed help—their 2009-era WordPress site was broken, outdated, and embarrassing to share. After showing him the HOST Park and ʻĀkoʻakoʻa websites, Tetrachrome was brought on to rebuild their entire digital presence.

The challenge was capturing the essence of a company whose motto is "Non Sibi Sed Orbi"—Not for self, but for the world. An ultra-flashy, self-promotional website would have been completely wrong. Instead, I focused on understated elegance: classic, rooted in place and culture, but not showy. The design needed to reflect their deep commitment to community, Hawaiian culture, sustainability, and family legacy without overstating it.

To understand the family's story, I read The Shipmans of East Hawaii, their family biography. The book gave me critical context about their roots, values, and evolution as a business across nearly 150 years. That understanding informed every design and content decision—from how we presented their historical timeline to how we talked about their land stewardship philosophy.

The visual identity refresh included a logo refresh and establishing a color palette of deep forest green and warm off-white beige, and selecting Ivyora Display and Ivyora Text for typography—choices that reinforced the timeless, elegant tone.

Content development was a collaborative process combining multiple sources. I worked with the old website text, used ChatGPT to refine messaging and structure, and conducted Q&A sessions with the W.H. Shipman, Limited team to clarify details. Building the historical timeline and archival gallery required careful curation to tell the story of the company's evolution from 1882 to present day.

The Webflow build included CMS collections for properties, team members, and news updates, allowing the W.H. Shipman, Limited team to manage content independently. The agricultural inquiry form was integrated to streamline business development outreach. The site architecture needed to balance business functionality (properties, agriculture, development) with their community and conservation commitments, ensuring neither overshadowed the other.

Beyond the website, I designed and implemented a private shareholders platform on Bettermode. This required creating a secure system for family access to company resources and administrative functions, then training the internal team on platform management. The goal was sustainability—building something they could run independently without ongoing external support.

Art directing photography with Andrew Hara required strategic thinking about how to represent Haʻena respectfully. The top-down loko iʻa drone shot solved the challenge of showing the beauty and significance of the place without revealing too much. The abstract quality of the straight-down perspective made it visually compelling while maintaining the sacred nature of the location.

The project ran from Fall 2024 through early 2025. The result is a digital presence that matches the gravity and grace of W.H. Shipman, Limited—understated, elegant, and rooted in their values of stewardship and service.