Happy Cog talks about their work redesigning zappos.com
Initially, Happy Cog was brought in to assist in a comprehensive “re-skin” effort. As we began digging, several challenges were easy to diagnose. The old site lacked a core defining visual style that felt purposeful. Individual elements didn’t necessarily contribute to a collective, consistent visual language. Many content modules had an aesthetic all their own. Page spacing and layout structures often felt forced together and disjointed. The unique Zappos.com tone of the site copy was evident in some places and absent from others. Some copy made customers laugh, smile, or feel inspired while the text in other sections felt rigid and instructional. Typographic choices were often at odds with the design, and felt like styling afterthoughts. Copy and navigation were shoehorned into valuable pixels of whitespace. The parts didn’t add up to a coherent experience.
After our initial exploration, we determined that a re-skin was only part of the solution. The Zappos.com web team needed something different. They didn’t just want a bunch of newly designed pages, they needed a design system. We set out on a mission to create a system of typographic rules, versatile grids, and flexible modules that would enable their internal teams to better react to the ever-changing e-commerce landscape.
