Responses by blok design.

Background: Launched by blok, product design studio førs designs emotionally driven tableware with poetic intent—going beyond lifestyle to be about life and the simple moments of beauty that are essentially transcendental. We needed to design an e-commerce website that would serve the business needs and equally invite users into a digitally engaging visual experience. The platform had to have clarity and poetry and be true to the nature of the brand.

Holding space for conversation and soulful living forms the core of førs’s practice. In addition to the shop, the site features Wønder, an editorial space that honors the talented people in our lives who are collaborators and constant inspirations.

Design core: The shop’s custom modular grid was designed specifically for flexibility and flow. It was important to include opportunities for variation and movement so that the shop page didn’t feel repetitive, but rather could be redesigned as needed. The custom grid gives us more control to curate our products and storytell with our photography at a finer level.

Balancing the site’s needs guided the importance of photography, pacing and rhythm. We had the pleasure of working with our friends and photographers Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott, who captured the line’s soulful essence and poetic nature. Understanding the flow of imagery was integral to the design, so time went into art directing tones, shapes and forms to imbue an emotional fluency into the site.

Challenges: Having a seamless shopping experience across platforms was the top priority. A lot of thought and detail went into designing and finessing the quick cart and product pages so they could effectively hold the necessary content and functionalities.

Also, implementing Wønder in Shopify’s back end was quite a complicated process. This required many workarounds to Shopify’s constraints in order to achieve a typographically rich editorial design that the platform itself could not naturally provide.

Favorite details: All the little battles fought and won that you do not see. We did not compromise or settle for standards, working directly with the app developers to once again shift their own constraints to serve our design needs.

Navigation structure: Our shop page navigation was built to easily access product collections. Its drop-down categories work as product filters to create custom groupings: plates & bowls, spices & sauces, tea & coffee and so on. Since we have more than 50 product variations, making curated collections ensures the user isn’t overwhelmed and can easily find a specific product.

We also included bread-crumb navigation at the top of the product pages, enabling users to easily trace back as they move throughout the site. We intentionally designed an experience through with visitors could naturally flow from page to page.