Simon Pearce
Simon Pearce's website was reimagined to meet the quiet craft behind the glass itself. Warm, considered, and rooted in the brand's handmade, one-at-a-time process, the new design gives proper space to material, texture, and the mark of the maker's hand.
About
A full Shopify rebuild translating the new brand guidelines into a live site: PDP, PLP, navigation, and homepage systems, plus storytelling sections built around craft, process, and founder heritage. Delivered alongside a modular, reusable template system so the internal team can maintain consistency without a designer touching every future update.
The Brand
Simon Pearce makes glassware and home goods by hand, one-at-a-time, in Quechee, Vermont. The pontil mark left by the glassblower's iron treated as a literal signature of the maker's hand. The new brand strategy turns that process into the whole story: nature as material and muse, the hand adding heart to every piece, care as an enduring practice rather than a marketing line. Tone of voice is deliberately narrow, humble, not rustic; considered, not elite; strong-willed, not rebellious; optimistic, not fanciful. Restraint with warmth, not minimalism for its own sake.
Objectives & Goals
Simon Pearce had just been through a full rebrand and needed a partner to actually translate it into a working site. This meant a new type system, a warm neutral palette, natural materials treated as visual texture. The existing site also lacked basic ecommerce fundamentals, so the brief doubled: bring the new brand to life, and bring the shopping experience up to standard, at the same time. Many decisions that would normally be settled in brand guidelines still had to be made at the UI level.
Platform
Shopify
Design Credits
Creative Director: Lenora Rigoni Senior Designer: Sarah Wong UX Designer: Suzi Hyun Agency: Domaine
Discussion of Creative & UX
The brand book paired a craft-forward serif with a plain digital workhorse sans, translating that pairing into an actual type hierarchy across PDP, navigation, and body copy took real UX judgment, not just applying styles. The same went for color and material: a warm, restrained palette and materials like kraft, linen, and stone had to move from moving mood boards into imagery, backgrounds, and packaging touchpoints on-site without becoming decoration. Because the brand was starting from a weak UX baseline, a large share of the real work was fundamentals. This included clear PDP hierarchy, functional navigation, predictable filtering and done in a way that still felt handmade rather than templated. Storytelling carried the rest: dedicated sections on process, the workshop, and founder heritage, so the brand's craft is felt in the experience, not just claimed in copy.