A shop with a point of view was wearing a template.
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.
Role
Design lead, solo
Timeline
2026, design
Team
The studio owner and me
Live
01
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.
02
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.
I built the whole homepage eight times. Not eight ideas. Eight passes at the same idea, each one asking the same question: what can leave.
03
How I ran it
This one ran solo, with the studio owner as the only other voice, so the process was about making decisions reviewable rather than about coordinating people.
Three openings came first, shown side by side rather than one at a time, so the conversation was a comparison rather than a verdict. Each one taught something specific: the photography led version proved the obvious route was the wrong one, the type led version proved it could have belonged to anyone, and the third proved the page could admit there's more below without a scroll cue.
After that came eight passes at the homepage, every one of them a subtraction, and each one logged so the owner could see what had gone and why.
04
The journey
This is a shop with a point of view, so the journey had to argue for the studio before it asked for a sale. The home page opens on the plants, then the workshops, then the journal, and the sign off at the bottom is the newsletter rather than a discount.
There are four ways into the page and they all lead to the same two places, the shop and the workshops. That was deliberate. A small studio doesn't need a deep tree, it needs two doors that are impossible to miss.
The spine underneath is one measure, one green, and two typefaces. Every section sits on the same grid, so the order things arrive in is the only thing that changes, which is why the homepage could be rebuilt eight times without redesigning anything else.
05
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.
06
Impact
Homepage passes before it settled
8
First directions, one survived
3
Typefaces, no third
2
Colour on the entire site
1
07
The work
The studio, the brief, the site that was there before, the three first designs, what each one taught me, the two typefaces, the four ways into the page, the workshops, the shop, the spine, and the eight passes at the homepage.
08
Go deeper
Design system and Figma
One spine runs the whole design. Every section starts at the same left margin and is separated from the next by a hairline rule, so the page reads as one column of thinking rather than a stack of blocks. Four numbers sit at the middle of the page, set in mono, because that's the only place the studio talks about itself in figures. There are no shadows, no rounded corners and no chrome anywhere.
Build and handover
The design is complete and handed over. A build would be a Framer site: the spine is a stack with one rule, the shop and the journal are collections, and the workshops section is the only piece needing real layout work, because the green panel has to meet the photograph exactly. Nothing in it depends on a plugin or a paid tier.
More
All work
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