Archives: Websites

eCommerce Websites

Uproot Wines

By Catalin Zorzini  /  February 12, 2025

Uproot Wines is a modern winery offering a selection of wines, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache, Grenache Blanc, and Rosé. Their website features a clean, intuitive design, showcasing products with high-quality imagery and detailed descriptions, providing an engaging and user-friendly shopping experience.

Moon Picnic

By Catalin Zorzini  /  September 11, 2026

Moon Picnic is a children’s toy and gift shop selling its own line of solid wood play sets alongside a selection from other makers, aimed at parents looking for open-ended play. Stock covers wooden toys, educational toys, creative play, games and puzzles, arts and crafts, books and home goods, from about $11.90 to $195. The shop runs two storefronts, one dispatching from California for the US and the rest of the world and one from England for the UK and Europe. Built on WordPress with WooCommerce.

Website Design

Two sans faces, no serif. Body text is set in futura-pt and headings in proxima-nova, both served from Adobe Fonts. The geometric body face gives running copy an even, rounded texture that sits close to the wooden products themselves.

A near-monochrome frame. The theme declares body text at #444444, strong text and buttons at #282828, secondary text at #7A7A7A, borders at #EEEEEE and a white page ground. No brand colour is defined, so colour arrives entirely through product photography.

Products cut out on white. Grids are filled with objects shot on plain white and cropped to the same card footprint whatever the real size, so a $16 cross stitch kit and a $195 block set read at equal weight.

Shopping Experience

A shop picker before browsing. A welcome panel asks the visitor to choose the US shop or the UK shop, and the product page repeats the instruction that European orders should use the UK site for the correct shipping rates.

Stock state carried by the button. Each card shows brand, title and price, and the call to action changes with availability: Add to cart for stocked items, Select options where there are variants, Read more where a line is sold out.

Navigation sorted by play, not age. The menu runs New, Play Time, Wooden Toys, Educational Toys, Creative Play, Games and Puzzles, Arts and Crafts, Books, Home and Sale.

Shipping rates inside the product page. A table listing destination, order threshold, carrier and delivery window sits in the product page itself, so postage is known before the cart.

Brand Storytelling

Provenance stated in the product copy. Listings name materials and count components. The My Bakery set is itemised down to its cast iron oven, bread paddle, three breads, two muffins, chalkboard and recipe card, in FSC solid beech except the composite chalkboard.

The own line kept separate from the stock list. The homepage opens with Moon Picnic Originals, described as made with solid wood from sustainable forests and made to last and pass on, before moving to stocked brands including kiko+ gg, Areaware, Wooden Story, Oioiooi, Wee Gallery, Goober and OMY.

Notable Features

Wishlist and gift cards. A wishlist counter sits in the header beside the cart, and gift cards run through a dedicated WooCommerce extension rather than as a normal product.

Search that reports its empty state. The header search returns a live results line and a no products found message in place, without routing to a separate results page.

A first-order discount. A persistent band above the footer offers 10% off in exchange for a newsletter subscription.

Josh Ryan

By Catalin Zorzini  /  September 23, 2026

Josh Ryan is a designer and illustrator in Houston, Texas who sells his own printed and manufactured work direct, describing himself as “a designer, illustrator, and maker of thangs.” The store runs to about eighty products across shirts, sweatshirts, headwear, leggings, swimwear, posters and prints, books and zines, enamel pins, mugs, stickers, magnets and tote bags, with a single fine art piece at the top of the range. Much of the catalogue is Houston-specific, built on local references such as the city’s historic blue tile street signs. Built on Shopify with a custom theme.

Website Design

Pink, cream and a deep green. The palette pairs a soft pink with an off-white cream ground, a muted sage green and a dark teal for text and footer panels, with a plum used sparingly. It reads closer to a stationery brand than a streetwear shop.

Carter One over Quicksand. Headings run in Carter One, a heavy rounded display face, with Quicksand carrying body copy and product descriptions. Both are rounded geometric forms, so the type matches the humour in the product names rather than working against it.

A scrolling tagline as a design element. “Do Stuff. Make Thangs. Have Fun.” repeats as a horizontal marquee across the homepage, dividing the hero from the product feed and doubling as the brand line.

Shopping Experience

Merchandise grouped twice over. The main nav sorts stock by format under Clothing, Printed Stuff and Goods & Accessories, then a parallel Collections menu groups the same items by joke or theme: Houston, Introvert Gifts, Okayest Life, Cat From Hell, Southern Hibachi and a Valentine’s Day set.

Prices from $2 to $60 for most of the range. Stickers and magnets sit at the low end, shirts and prints in the middle, and bags at $60, with free US shipping over $50. Roughly a fifth of variants carry a struck-through compare price.

Descriptions written as spec sheets. Product copy gives dimensions, finish and fabric in short labelled lines, so an enamel pin lists width, plating and the related variants rather than running to atmosphere.

A slide-out cart. Adding an item opens a drawer with a thumbnail table, quantity controls, a running total and both Proceed to Checkout and View Cart. Accounts, a wishlist and a sign-in flow sit alongside it.

Brand Storytelling

The About page is a portfolio. It covers the side projects the work is known for, including Introflirted love notes for introverts, Cool Pop Pop Art and a weather site, then lists interviews, podcasts and press before inviting commission enquiries.

Humour as the organising idea. The positioning is stated as connecting people “through shared experience, emotional vulnerability, and quirky humor”, and the collection names carry that through the catalogue.

Notable Features

Store and studio on one site. A Work and Portfolio section sits in the footer beside shipping and sizing, so commercial design enquiries and product orders share the same navigation.

A newsletter discount at 15%. Sign-up is offered for 15% off a first order, positioned under every product page.

Josh Ryan Shop Category page example

Josh Ryan Product page example

Josh Ryan footer example