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Melville House E-commerce Website

A radical update for the website of a progressive publisher

Client

Melville House Publishing

Timeline

2018–2024

Role

Art Director, Lead Designer

Melville House is an innovative Brooklyn- and London-based publisher. They're notable for a number of themed series (Last Interview, Art of the Novella, Neversink), mysteries in translation, rapid publishing of politically important reports, and a long-running blog, MobyLives. Melville House originally approached Familiar to redesign their existing site to act as an engaging platform privileging their books, to better connect e-commerce functions and MobyLives content, to be more accessible across device sizes, and to change e-commerce platforms.

Poetry (and Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Essays) in Motion

I leveraged existing brand visuals to maintain some level of visual continuity with the previous version of the website while embracing new possibilities and extending the color and type palette in useful ways. On both desktop and mobile, the site navigation was designed to suggest the qualities of a physical book, and pages throughout are designed to be highly readable and flexible enough to promote the wide variety of books Melville House publishes.

The site was designed in many key respects leveraging the browser as a design tool. There are subtle (and some less-subtle) interactions and animations throughout the site to add visual interest and help emphasize some of what makes Melville House unique. Many of these animations were prototyped by Debra Ohayon.

  • Desktop mockup of the Melville House website homepage
  • Desktop mockup of the Melville House books overview page
  • Desktop mockup of a Melville House book detail page for
  • Mobile mockup for a Melville House book detail page for
  • Mobile mockup for the Melville House Series overview page
  • Mobile mockup for a Melville House single series overview page for

The Familiar design team included Debra Ohayon and Minkyoung Kim

Ian Crowther is an art director and designer for product, web, and print.