Case
Owl
OWL is a Barcelona-based design studio led by Alfredo Lopez, which designs and manufactures unique furniture and objects.
The brief
Owl's pieces sit between product and object: they ask for a renovation of their old website. The idea of the art direction lead by Valerie Steenhaut and designed by Kalok Yeung was to find a modern language for the brand, caring about the transitions while loading the pages or images.
The decision
That year I was beginning to adopt new frameworks that loaded content faster and made transitions smoother. It was the right moment to build an API layer connecting the frontend to Shopify, combining the loading speed of Next.js with the strengths of a mature ecommerce platform.
With Arvin Leeuwis handling the frontend, the site explores different ways of presenting the product — from gallery imagery to 3D — with a carefully curated sense of flow.
The part nobody sees
Product colors are managed through a custom handler built on a Django API that syncs with Shopify. It ensures every variant displays its true color across the site — accurately and attractively — instead of relying on Shopify's default swatches.
