Refinery29 — Digital Editorial


Box It Up is Refinery29’s shop team’s holiday gifting package featuring the best-of-the-best gift inspiration across home, fashion, beauty, wellness, lifestyle, and more.

The package includes 3 gift guides, gift of the day and 9 most wanted gifts —all which rotate weekly for 8 weeks.

Having to find every friend and loved one a special gift each year is stressful enough, even a burden to some. I wanted the package to make gift-buying fun. Instead of a daunting grid filled with an overwhelming amount of items, we thought the best way would be to link the gifts out by category to then drive users back to the hub.

 







The difficult part when it came to art direction was, how do we visually represent these gifts that change on a weekly basis whilst still making them feel unique? Known for his surreal maximalist style, I commissioned 3D illustrator Pedro Neoki to create a selection of broad gifts that fit into the beauty, lifestyle, fashion and wellness categories. 




         

















I lettered the Box It Up wordmark and designed it to feel contained against a busy background of moving elements.

When it came to color, I wanted a palette that wasn’t Chrismas-leaning, yet still bright and expressive. Using a combination of R29’s primary and secondary colors allowed the illustrated elements to feel non-traditional.









Given the amount of gift guides and products rotating weekly, I had the everything on the hub appear on parallax scroll down the center and for the the floating gifts to serve as the “art” for each article.






















Each week, the package features 9 new most wanted gifts. While it’s impossible to art direct product images, I had Pedro create spot illos that felt like borderless, mini scenes for the products to live in. Yes, we had to silo out 72 products for it, but it was worth it.
















Made with

Disciplines
Refinery29 / VICE

Art Direction
Branding
Editorial Design
Lettering
Web Design/Interactivity