A luxury jewellery house
A heritage jewellery house now looks as premium online as it does in store
A family jewellery business with decades of history had an identity from the 1990s and a shopping app that looked like a template. Our digital growth team rebuilt both, first the brand and then the app, so the two finally match the pieces on sale.
Challenge
The founder had taken over a jewellery business with a long heritage, but its identity had not changed in about three decades. Younger buyers expected a brand that photographs well and sits comfortably on social media, and the old look could not do that.
The digital side had the same gap. An early prototype of the shopping app used stock carousels and default components. For pieces sold at premium prices, a generic app works against the sale.
Solution
The team kept the legacy and dropped the dated look. For the brand mark it chose a hummingbird: light, precise and free of the usual jewellery symbols such as diamonds. A soft modern serif for headlines and a clean sans for supporting text carry the sense of something inherited without feeling old.
The app was then designed on the same principles: editorial type, plenty of white space and motion that is calm rather than showy. Each screen went through a second pass focused only on how it feels to use.
- Logo, hummingbird mark, type pairing and colour palette
- Brand book covering voice, application and rules of use
- Packaging direction for boxes and dust bags, and photography art direction
- App design system for type, colour, spacing and motion
- More than 30 screens, with micro-interactions for product cards, wishlist and cart
- Custom icons, a component library and motion specifications handed to developers
Results
The app was approved on both stores on the first day it was submitted, and averaged 4.8 stars from users in its first month. The new identity gave the house a look that younger customers respond to, while keeping the values older customers recognise.