📋 TL;DR

Redesigned the Gibson Guitars online store as part of a self-initiated design challenge during lockdown, using randomly generated briefs from Briefz.Biz. With no constraints or client input, I applied industry practices to create a polished concept that blended my design skills with a personal passion for music.

📝 Background

Not long after I moved back from Bournemouth, the global pandemic sent the world into lockdown and my career would soon be put on hold. All of my scheduled interviews were cancelled, companies were understandably hesitant on hiring new starters, and at this time in my life, I was ultimately lost on what to do next. However, I didn't want to sit around and do nothing with my time. I began to work on side projects to keep my skills sharp whilst having fun at the same time.

One day, I stumbled across this awesome website known as Briefz.Biz. This website is a design brief generator supported and backed by an awesome community. With this website, you are able to generate random: Branding Design, Graphic Design, UI/UX Design, and Web Design briefs.

There are no limitations, no guidelines, no help decks, and no deadlines. These parameters are set by yourself. It puts the accountability on you to complete each brief (whilst letting your creativity run wild at the same time). The thing I love about this resource is that it allows you to put together a 'mock' project scope to emulate what it would be like in a live environment.

💡 Ideation

The online store that I attempted to redesign was Gibson Guitars (these guitars are iconic, if you know you know).

Why did I choose this online store? Here's a fun fact, one of my idols is Slash from Guns N' Roses! When I first saw and heard the magic that was being played on that Sunburst Gibson Les Paul, it inspired me to one day pick up a guitar and venture into the world of rock n' roll! Between the age of 10/11 all the way until 18, I was self-taught and even studied music in secondary school (I was also in a band).

At the time of this redesign, the Gibson website looked like this: Welcome to Gibson - archived from Wayback Machine.

Before going ahead and carrying out this redesign, I adopted a similar approach that I've carried out across previous projects throughout the years. With this approach, I was able to maintain a level of consistency whilst adapting certain steps that are not available at this time, e.g. gather feedback on wireframes, carry out rounds of testing to a live audience etc.

Within this redesign, I covered the following areas of the online store:

1. Homepage
2. Product Page
3. Cart
4. Checkout
5. Mobile Responsiveness

🎨 Branding

🖼️ Final Designs

These are the final designs created for the project brief