Fixed scope
Fixed price
against a written scope
- Written scope and acceptance criteria up front
- Fixed price against that scope
- Staged delivery with review points
- Change requests priced separately, never absorbed silently
eCommerce branding and store design
Identity, art direction and a design system that survives contact with a real catalogue. Designed as components with every state specified, handed over as tokens and Shopify sections rather than a PDF nobody can implement.
A design system, not a homepage comp
A beautiful homepage mockup tells you almost nothing about whether a store will work. The truth is in the collection page with 47 filters, the product with a name that runs to three lines, and the empty search result.
Designed against your real data
We design with your actual product names, image quality, review counts and variant structures. If half your catalogue has no lifestyle photography, the design has to work with that rather than assume it away.
Every component gets its awkward states specified: empty, loading, error, out of stock, on sale, long title, missing image, one review, no reviews.
What we deliver
Handed over as tokens and sections
Colour, type, spacing and radius as named tokens; components as Shopify sections with schema. The design system and the built storefront are the same thing rather than two artefacts that drift apart within a quarter.
Accessibility is designed in — contrast measured against the actual rendered background, not the swatch, and focus states drawn rather than left to the browser default.
Custom sections
How the design is built to hold
Design decisions expressed as things a browser can enforce, not as a style guide people stop reading.
Design tokens
Colour, type, spacing and radius as named CSS custom properties — one source, used by the storefront and the design files alike.
Component library
Every component drawn with its states, then built as a Shopify section with schema and limits that keep it on brand.
Contrast measured on real grounds
Every text colour checked against the background it actually renders on, including tinted pills and chips over a card over a section. Checking against the flat token is exactly how contrast failures survive a design review.
Type system
One family, a fixed set of weights, and a scale that holds from a 12px meta label to a hero. Each additional weight is a separate font download, so the system is deliberately narrow.
Motion
Consistent duration and easing, with a genuine reduced-motion path rather than an animation that simply disappears.
Art direction
Photography and illustration direction your team can brief against, including what to do when the asset does not exist.
What a branding project delivers
Identity work and storefront design are usually scoped together, because one without the other tends not to survive.
Identity
Logo, palette, type and the rules for using them — sized for a storefront and a marketplace tile, not just a letterhead.
Storefront design
Home, collection, product, cart and content templates designed at component level with every state specified.
States, not screens
Empty, loading, error, out-of-stock, on-sale, long-title, missing-image and no-reviews states drawn for every component. The happy path is the easy 20% of a design; shipping without the rest is how a beautiful comp becomes an ugly storefront.
- Empty
- Error
- Out of stock
Accessible by design, measured not assumed
Contrast checked against the actual rendered background rather than the swatch, focus states drawn deliberately, and keyboard paths through navigation, filters and cart designed rather than inherited. We will not claim a certification we have not been audited for.
- Contrast on real grounds
- Visible focus
- Keyboard paths
Tokens & documentation
Named tokens, component documentation, and guidance written for the people who will use it.
Handover
Built as Shopify sections with schema, so what was designed is what ships.
Design system vs page-by-page design
Comps are faster to produce and slower to live with. This is the trade.
| Page-by-page comps | Design system | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first visual | Fastest | Slower — the system comes first |
| Cost of page eleven | Same as page one, every time | Near zero — assemble from components |
| Consistency after six months | Drifts as pages accumulate | Enforced by tokens and schema |
| Edge cases | Discovered in build | Specified in design |
| Handover to developers | Interpretation required | Tokens and components, one to one |
| Team can build pages | Needs a designer each time | Yes, from the library |
| Accessibility | Checked late, if at all | Measured during design |
| Best when | A one-off campaign page | A storefront you will run for years |
How we work
How a design project runs
7 stages. Open any one of them.
Brand and audience
Before any pixels.
Positioning, audience, competitive set and the constraints that are real — asset quality, catalogue size, team capability.
Art direction
Two or three directions, not twelve.
Distinct territories explored properly rather than a dozen variations of the same idea. You pick one and we develop it.
Tokens and components
The part that makes it last.
Colour, type, spacing, radius and motion fixed as tokens; components specified with all their states.
Storefront design
With your real content.
Templates assembled from the component library using your actual product names, images and review counts.
Accessibility pass
Measured, not assumed.
Contrast checked against real rendered grounds, focus states reviewed, keyboard paths walked before build starts.
Implementation
Designed and built as one thing.
Components built as Shopify sections with schema, so the system and the storefront do not drift.
Documentation and training
So it survives you and us.
Component docs, usage guidance and a walkthrough for the team who will run campaigns against it.
Ways to engage
Three shapes, depending on how well defined the work is. Every one starts with a scoped written proposal — no work begins on a verbal estimate.
Retainer
Monthly
block of hours
- A block of hours each month
- Prioritized by you, replanned as often as you like
- The same developers month to month
- Reporting on what the hours went to
Time & materials
Tracked time
billed as used
- Billed against tracked time
- Suits discovery, R&D and migrations
- Estimate per ticket before it starts
- Stop or change direction at any point
Rates are quoted against a written scope rather than published as a tier, because the same service costs very different amounts on a five-template store and a five-hundred-template one.
Context
The categories we build for
Art direction is category-driven in a way that layout is not. What reads as premium in jewellery reads as cold in childrenswear.
Fashion & Apparel
Beauty & Cosmetics
Food & Beverage
Jewelry & Luxury
Home & Outdoor
Electronics
Health & Supplements
Subscription
Sports & Fitness
Multi-region
Marketplace & Multi-store
Questions about eCommerce branding
Identity, art direction and a design system delivered as named design tokens and Shopify sections rather than a PDF. Colour, type, spacing and radius become CSS custom properties; every component is drawn with its states — empty, loading, error, out of stock, on sale, long title, missing image, no reviews — then built as a Shopify section with schema, so the design system and the storefront stay the same thing.
Usually a redesign. A full identity change is warranted when the positioning has genuinely moved, not when the storefront simply looks dated — and it carries costs well beyond the website. We will tell you which one the evidence supports before scoping either.
Yes, and the useful work is often translating them into something a Shopify storefront can enforce. Print-era guidelines rarely say what the focus state looks like, what happens at 320px, or which colour pairs pass contrast on a tinted chip.
Accessibility is designed in rather than checked afterwards: contrast measured against the actual rendered background rather than the swatch, focus states drawn deliberately, and keyboard paths through navigation, filters and cart designed rather than inherited. We will not claim a WCAG conformance certification we have not been audited for — a formal statement needs a third-party auditor.
Usually, and we prefer to. Designs handed to a separate build team drift, and the states that make a design survive real data are exactly the ones that get dropped. Components are built as Shopify sections with schema, so what was designed is what ships.
Then the design has to work with that, and we design for it explicitly rather than assuming a photoshoot that may never be budgeted. Art direction includes what to do when the ideal asset does not exist.
Yes — that is what the Shopify section library is for: constrained settings, sensible defaults, and colour drawn from the theme palette rather than a free picker, so a campaign is assembled from components rather than designed from scratch.
It depends on whether identity work is in scope and how many templates are involved. We scope first and quote against a written scope — fixed price, retainer, or time and materials.
Named design tokens for colour, type, spacing and radius; a documented component library with every state specified; template designs; and the built Shopify sections with schema. Not a PDF.
A store that looks like everyone else’s?
Tell us where your brand is going and what your catalogue actually looks like. We will come back with a direction and an honest read on scope.