Neiman Marcus InSite
A luxury retailer's digital editorial hub from 2012. Magazine layouts, runway typography, and studio-shot photography, all in service of the sale.
Field Editorial Design Art Direction Typography
Author Jeremy Prasatik Published: 2012 Status: Complete
Classification Story Development Editorial Design Photo Direction Art Direction Typography
Abstract
InSite was Neiman Marcus's digital editorial hub. The mandate read like a contradiction - make the website feel like a magazine, sell product like a store, don't let either side win.
Every piece started with the story. Designer spotlights introducing names like Derek Lam and Helmut Lang to a broader luxury audience, seasonal trend narratives organized around color or silhouette, ways-to-wear features that styled a single garment multiple directions. The concept came first, then the shoot, the styling, and the layout followed.
All studio photography, no location budgets. Graphic color blocks stood in for environments a different production might have flown to, and pixelated saturated fields built mood when a sunset wasn't in the cards. Typography did the rest - designer names built as compositions instead of headlines, letters interlocking with photography, overlapping garments, sometimes breaking the grid and trusting that the shopper would still find the price.
Spotlights That Read Like Print Profiles.
The Contemporary Art series framed emerging designer collections as introductions. Theyskens' Theory, Rag & Bone, 10 Crosby Derek Lam, Helmut Lang, Kelly Wearstler. Names that carried weight in fashion circles but needed context for a broader luxury shopper.
Each spread built the designer's name as a typographic composition. Oversized serifs with torn-edge framing. Letters interlocking with the figures. The typography did the work a feature profile would have done in print. Shoppers arrived at a product page having read a story, not scrolled a catalog.
Saturated Color Did the Work of a Location Scout.
No location budgets, just studio sweeps and seamless paper. The creative had to stand in for the world outside the shoot, so pixelated color blocks did the work of environments. A grid of saturated tones built the mood that a room and a sunset would have built on a bigger production.
Hot Pink, Yellow, Rainbow, Orange, Coral - each color story led with a word and a grid of color chips stepping through tonal values. The pixelation read as digital on purpose, and the treatment stopped pretending it was in print. Color did the work a location scout would have handled somewhere else.
Each story sets its own temperature.
Type That Set the Volume of the Page.
Some stories wanted letters nearly dissolving into texture - Minimalism, Structure, thin outline serifs ghosting behind the garment. Others wanted theater - The Rocker, The Socialite, Classic Beauty, with oversized display serifs wrapped into the subject's silhouette and negative space doing the layout work.
The typographic decision came before the shoot. The designer ran scale, weight, and position through the story's concept, then briefed the photographer with those parameters. A quiet story got a quiet silhouette on a flat gray paper sweep, while a loud story got a saturated backdrop and a pose with room for a letter to land across the shoulder.
One Garment, Styled Four Different Directions.
The ways-to-wear template styled a single garment multiple directions. A black dress with a denim jacket. A silk blouse with an ikat sweater. Equations written in typography: noun + noun + noun, with the plus signs oversized and the outfit in motion lines behind the figure.
The speed lines rendered behind the models gave the spreads a sense of motion that a flat studio shot can't generate on its own. The grid stayed consistent: figure left or right, typography opposite, equation stacked vertically. The format held identical across dozens of variations. Merchandising could plug product photography into the template and ship without waiting for a custom design.
Editorial Commerce Before It Was a Category.
Designer spotlights, color stories, typographic theater, ways-to-wear grids - one hub holding dozens of stories. Every layout was a decision about how far to push the editorial without losing the shopper.
Services
Story Development
Editorial Design
Photo Direction
Art Direction
Typography
Stack
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Links
A luxury retailer's digital hub that behaved like a magazine without forgetting it was a store. The studio-only mandate forced the creative to carry the weight - color blocks stood in for location photography, and typography did the work a stylist and a location scout would have handled on a bigger production.
The stories held up because the framework underneath held up. Fixed templates for ways-to-wear, open typography for designer spotlights, color-as-environment for trend pieces - a framework loose enough to support a dozen editorial moods and tight enough that every story felt like it came from the same room.
