A content framework for Nordstrom.com, built from scratch: names, icons, custom lockups, and a place for everything. It gave the homepage, email, and landing pages one way of sorting a lot of everything.
Merchandising, marketing and editorial each pushed their own, all onto the same homepage.
Email ran on its own cadence and landing pages on another. The only thing tying any of it together was the date on the calendar.
Four buckets, and every story had to land in one of them.
What's Now for arrivals and trending brands, On Our List for seasonal picks and staples. Where to Wear and Wear to Where both cover occasion dressing, one starting from the event and the other from the outfit.
Each name got a custom icon and a typographic mark of its own. Sourced a different typeface for every lockup, so no two of them share a face.
It reads like a magazine
Homepage modules, dedicated email sections, and whole landing pages built around a single bucket, so a customer could tell what they were looking at anywhere it showed up.
Before any of it reached a customer, the framework was already working inside the building. Planning meetings used the bucket names. Content calendars mapped stories to buckets at the brief stage, and campaigns that used to be one-offs got planned as part of a category.
The framework applied
Full landing page
Lockup and icon per module
Scroll. It fills the mat, then travels the frame
Icons evolved, typography got refreshed, buckets got renamed. The four-bucket structure underneath stayed the same.
It started as a pitch across three teams and ended up as the way everyone who touched digital content talked about the work.
Brand Design
Naming
Design Systems
