Responses by Drexler.

Background: The new Stillwater site was conceived as an archival platform to showcase its beverage concepts from over the years while also functioning as an e-commerce experience for sharing current and future offerings with the world. With Stillwater’s global following in the craft beer and beverage industry, its new site gives visitors the opportunity to access products and previously unavailable information.

Design core: The site’s overall approach to the site embraces the minimalist aesthetics of the Stillwater brand. An unorthodox homepage carousel—where everything moves all at once—challenges the user to make their next move. Animation adds detail to the otherwise minimal approach, from scroll animations to loading the typography from section to section.

Challenges: We were faced with two challenges when developing the approach for the design and development of this site. The first challenge required separate storefronts for visitors from the United States and from the United Kingdom and European Union. We opted to use a WordPress Multisite, enabling us to keep a unified theme across both sites while being able to meet Stillwater’s different business requirements.

The second, which may not seem like a challenge, was starting from a completely blank slate. Stillwater did not have any prior online presence; everything it had in place was basically temporary. This meant we had to architect a new platform and develop content for a brand that was already ten years old. The process was collaborative at times, but we were empowered to run with our ideas and develop content we thought was important on the fly.

Special navigational features: While we give the user a standard navigation toggle and panel to make their way through the site, we created the homepage with a focus on challenging the user to navigate in an unorthodox way. We present them with paths to select, but after a few seconds, they change position, ultimately returning to their initial placement after cycling through the homepage content. This approach embodies Stillwater’s attitude toward an industry driven by trends—we put our own spin on what the standards are.

Technology: The site was built on a highly customized WordPress and WooCommerce admin with HTML, JavaScript, PHP and Sass. We extended WooCommerce product pages with modular custom fields, enabling us to construct different product content levels, from packed with stories and imagery to simple, single product pages with minimal description. Almost all of the animation is driven by CSS except for the use of three.js, which powers a spinning globe on the Find Our Beer page, and GSAP, which helps animate the logo found in the site’s upper left.