Vermillion Heir
Custom Big Cartel Theme Design & Development
Super kooky custom Big Cartel theme for Vermillion Heir, Purveyors of Artisan, Couture and Niche Luxury Goods and Fine Curioddities.
Possibly one of our more kooky and utterly bonkers customisations – Vermillion Heir is operated by one of our partner companies and, as can be expected when you work with close friends, they challenged us to go as out there as we could ever wish – an open creative brief.
Given the nature of the store’s product mix; artisan, eclectic and high designer luxury goods, we wanted to create a completely one-off store identity; full of character, whim and secrets! The rationale behind the design was based partly around the brand’s strong sense of story telling and partly around simple usability factors. To succeed, the user’s journey had to play a vital part of this story to bring that “real life” sense of emotion to the online shopping experience, which is predominantly played out in the design elements.
The overall theme needed to evoke the feeling one might encounter upon discovering a tiny, ‘olde worlde shop’ upon the tiny cobbled back streets of London, something quintessentially British… but nonetheless modern and practical befitting of the internet.
Commission Artwork
We called upon the mighty talents and feathered quill of Brooklyn’s most illustrious artist, the phenomenal Molly Crabapple for the commission artwork. Her kooky illustrative style, rich in detail, tongue-in-cheek humour and distinct aesthetic brought the concept to life and a fine dandy gent and a sassy red head to truly depict the Vermillion Heir character are the story’s main characters. There’s plenty more but you need to see for yourself and interpret as you will!
Big Cartel Customisation
The physical store itself was built on the Big Cartel framework, a blend of their 2 themes entwined (no mean feat we can assure you!) and packed full of extras to take the customisation to the next level. We’ve really enjoyed working with Big Cartel, it offers an affordable and highly customisable ecommerce platform for niche stores.
Big props must go out to the Big Cartel team who are continually working hard behind the scenes to make the platform even more designer/developer friendly, expandable and feature rich. We are officially smitten!
Custom Store Features
Commission only artwork, stylised web graphics, some extreme CSS tinkering, custom image capture script, stylised artist list page, social media optimisation (SMO), easy-to-update home page banners, custom contact form, shopping cart, navigation, breadcrumbs and all the other good things you’d expect from a custom store… and most likely more but you’ll have to discover those for yourself!
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