Thinking Gifts

Thinking Gifts

The happiest eComm

The happiest eComm

Challenge

Thinking Gifts had been providing high-quality educational gifts since 1998 - when founder Gary, still a University student at the time, launched their very first Bookchair.

Over the years, the brand continued to set the standard for the reading accessory industry, and extended into retail stockists, as well as having its own eComm store. But as times evolved, the brand had not. It did not look professional or polished to appeal to a trade audience, and did not represent the type of fun reading accessories it sold. It also did not stand out from competitors. The website itself had been built on a restrictive template, and did not lend itself to the discoverability of products across Thinking Gifts’ expansive range.

How might we position Thinking Gifts as the brand and website to keep coming back to for gifts that are a hit with kids (and the young at heart)?

Solution

In order to create a brand that would resonate with a new target, as well as nod to Thinking Gift’s original mission, we needed an insight deeply embedded in the products themselves. Knowing that reading helps kids create amazing, bright and colourful worlds in their minds, we decided to use this as our fertile starting point for the brand.

We defined our brand personality as fun, clever, optimistic and helpful, and then set about bringing the brand identity to the modern era. The new identity needed to enhance our performance in digital contexts, ensuring we stay ahead in the rapidly changing market landscape.

With a brand concept of ‘Limitless Creativity’, we crafted a visual identity that embraces playfulness and childlike wonder through vibrant colours, captivating illustrations and joyful motion.

Expressing a playful identity

Needing to strike the balance between expressive yet still functional, we selected The Future from Klim Type Foundry as our logo font, creating custom ligatures between the letters for a warm and connected feeling. This was also used as our primary typeface, as it is distinctive and contemporary, yet still approachable. Tiempos, also from Klim, was selected as our secondary typeface - a timeless serif that is sophisticated while being legible.

The colour palette was modernised to focus more on classic primary colours that would stand the test of time.

We introduced an illustrative style that embodies the playful and creative personality of Thinking Gifts, serving as a powerful tool to accentuate and infuse flair into our communications.

These illustrations can be developed further to express the creative realms our customers unlock while engaging with Thinking Gift products - whether it be immersing themselves in new stories through reading, culinary adventures, decluttering their workspace, or simply relaxing.

A joyful UX journey

When it came to the eCommerce platform, our vision was to create a sophisticated yet playful site that brilliantly showcases products while powering seamless transactions.

The UX was a core focus, to improve the user experience from discovery, all the way through to checkout. Category naming conventions were reworked to more closely reflect user needs. "Plusheez" sure sound like fun, but the word did little at a category level to signpost to users they were mobile phone holders. With a key target audience of busy mums, we clarified to help customers find what they’re after faster.

A revamped product page layout highlighted key benefits and product quality, helping to underscore that Thinking Gifts isn’t just a novelty store - every product has been designed with the user in mind.

We also simplified the checkout process and introduced curated gift sections like “Under $20,” “Bestsellers,” and “Gifts for Tech Lovers,” to make decisions easier and streamline the path to purchase.

Details to deliver a smile

Thinking Gifts’ products bring joy to every day activities, and so to bring joy to the site, we leveraged moments of interaction and animation to bring a smile to peoples’ faces.

Rive animations of hand-drawn sketches on the product category tiles dial up the fun brand elements and showcase Thinking Gift’s personality, while also aiding comprehension.

Underpinning the entire build was Swell, a flexible headless commerce platform that allowed us to craft a custom storefront with seamless content and commerce integration.

The result is an ecommerce experience that’s as smart and delightful as the products it showcases, balancing fun with functionality.