Funky wines at your fingertips
Role: Lead Designer
Goal: Design the digital brand experience
Platforms: B2C E-commerce platform
Status: Work in progress
Grape Theory
Objective
Grape Theory is a curated natural wine brand dedicated to sourcing and showcasing biodynamic and organic wines from small, independent wineries around the world.
They needed an e-commerce platform to sell their wines and to provide information about the business.
The Brand
Brand Personality
Grape Theory exudes a modern, understated elegance that appeals to the "Havermelk Elite” (as coined by Jonas Kooyman) which is the stylish, sustainability-conscious crowd who value craftsmanship and authenticity over mass-market appeal.
The brand is warm, authentic, aproachable, and deeply knowledgeable,
Unique Selling Proposition
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Sustainability First: Every bottle is sourced from environmentally responsible vineyards, emphasising biodynamic and organic practices.
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Local Meets Global: Grape Theory offers wines with a local vibe, celebrating the unique stories of winemakers from different regions.
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Taste Over Hype: No flashy discounts or over-the-top promotions, just exceptional wine, beautifully presented.
Target Audience
Grape Theory's audience is urban, stylish, and values-driven, aged 25–45. They shop at Ekoplaza, value experiences over savings, and are just as likely to pair their wine with a homemade pasta dish as with a gourmet meal. They are very active on social media, sharing lifestyle snapshots that showcase great food and good company.
Key Deliverables
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Online Brand Guidelines: Logo, typography, color palette, and tone of voice documentation.
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Website: A responsive, visually stunning e-commerce platform that embodies the brand ethos.
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Marketing Collateral: Make sure the experience suits all future Social media templates, digital ads, and email newsletter designs.
Website Features
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Storytelling Product Pages: Highlight the story behind each wine, its vineyard, and the winemaker.
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Curated Selections: Help users discover wines based on mood, season, or food pairing.
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Community Engagement: A blog or journal featuring winemaker interviews, wine culture, and sustainability tips.
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Simple Checkout: Clean, intuitive design for seamless purchases.
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Visuals: High-quality, natural photography showcasing wines in beautiful, earthy settings.
Design System
Due to being a pretty straightforward e-commerce platform, the design system could be set-up fairly straightforward.
We needed a few organic-looking base colours, accompanied by 3 vibrant and trendy accent colours to make it really stand out from other wine-shops that focus more on only that ‘natural’ vibe. Add the tones and shades for interaction purposes that can be used for the states of the buttons.
The title typography is both artisanal and functional, easy to read but with an earthy, hand drawn vibe. The title font is also thick enough to be used for drawing on shop-fronts/windows and merchandise. The base font is open and sans serif.
Result
Easily browse through the many different wines available on the platform, quick-filter on type of wine of just the additional filters to narrow your search even more. Save your favourite wines and quickly add to cart.
Next steps would be to actually launch the online platform and monitor the flows and see what to improve. Additionally you would add effective content marketing strategy to boost exposure and get the right people in at the right time.