Form Studio Site

Form is a creative atelier and interior garden studio in Perth. The brief was a single line, and the work was deciding, pass after pass, what the page could do without.

The problem

The brief was one line, which was to make it feel like a studio and not a garden centre. Everything the studio sells is chosen, and the site wasn't showing that choosing.

The old site wasn't broken, and that was the problem. It had sage green, rounded corners, four product tiles and a newsletter band, so it looked like every other plant shop, which meant it looked like nobody. A black walled shop that people drive across the city for was wearing a template.

What I did

I took the editorial decision rather than the retail one

A garden centre sells stock. A studio sells judgement. So the site had to lead with the words, the type, the grid and the order things arrive in, not with a product grid and a promotion band. Every later decision came out of that one.

I designed three first directions, and I kept the one that told the truth

I designed three openings and put them side by side rather than showing them one at a time, because nobody can judge a direction in isolation. The photography led version looked like every plant shop in the world. The type led version could have belonged to anything. The third decided the project: one image under the sentence, a second edging in from the right unfinished, so the page admits there's more below without begging for the scroll.

I used two typefaces and no third

Instrument Serif and Geist Mono carry the whole system, serif for the sentences and mono for the labels and the numbers. Green is the only colour and it's used sparingly, so that when it arrives it means something.

I built the homepage eight times

They weren't eight ideas. They were eight passes at the same idea, and each one asked what could leave. The workshops section went four times on its own before the green panel won, because the seam where it meets the photograph is the whole point of it.

What shipped

What shipped is a complete design for the homepage, shop, workshops, journal and about, all sitting on one spine, with every section on the same left margin, separated by a hairline, and no chrome, no drop shadows and no rounded corners. Four numbers hold the middle of the page.

It's a design, handed over. It hasn't been built, and none of it is live.