Gentle Fun
Designed for Little Minds
Splocks needed to go from zero to a fully functioning D2C brand: no identity, no website, no packaging. I owned every touchpoint from brand strategy through Shopify launch.
Scope
Brand · UX/UI · Shopify Dev · Photography
timeline
Aug 2023 - Oct 2024 & Ongoing
tools
Figma · Illustrator · Photoshop · Shopify
platform
Shopify · Instagram · Facebook · TikTok · Amazon
01 - The ChallengeBuilding a brand from nothing
Splocks Bricks, the vibrant and foam building blocks designed for children's enjoyment, inspired our dynamic rebranding journey. Our goal was to encapsulate the essence of fun and playfulness inherent in these colorful blocks.
The Starting Point
When I joined the project, Splocks had one product, small foam building bricks, sold exclusively on Amazon under the parent brand Envirolite. There was no standalone brand, no website, and only low-quality product photography.
photos BeforePhotos felt clinical and sterile
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photos AfterPhotos feel inviting and approachable
The business goal was clear: build a brand identity and launch a D2C Shopify storefront from scratch within three months.
Understanding the Buyer
The primary buyer is parents, specifically moms, and educators. This shaped the aesthetic direction immediately. Most competitors in the foam block space lean heavily on primary colors and utilitarian packaging, which reads as generic on a shelf or in a feed. Knowing our buyer was browsing Instagram or shopping online for something that felt a little more considered gave us room to differentiate.
The product itself launched with a standard color offering: red, green, yellow, orange, blue, purple, black, and gray, which serves an important functional purpose for children learning to identify colors. I wanted the brand palette to stay true to the product color while feeling unique enough to stick out in the market.
02 — Brand IdentityA visual language as playful as the product
The brand system was built to feel immediately recognizable warm, energetic, and a step above the usual child’s brand aesthetic.
For the logo, I chose a custom wordmark that deliberately steps away from the brand typeface. Keeping the two separate gives the wordmark its own identity and ensures it reads as a standalone mark rather than a headline, something simple enough to be reproduced consistently across packaging, social, labels, and any future product touchpoints.
The primary typeface is DM Sans, chosen for its versatility and extensive weight family. Having a range of weights available, from light to bold, meant the type system could do a lot of work across very different contexts: small captions on packaging, bold CTAs on the website, and everything in between, all from a single cohesive family.
The color palette anchors the brand in purple, gender-neutral, differentiated from the parent brand's blue, and a natural fit for a product that already ships in a full spectrum of colors. Lime and orange round out the palette as accent colors, adjacent and complementary to purple, giving the system the energy and playfulness the product calls for without tipping into chaos.
03 — Packaging Design
Fun at scale, on a tight budget
Full-color printing was outside the budget, so the packaging had to work in a single color. Rather than letting that be a limitation, I leaned into it as a design challenge, using the brand's primary color, typography and illustration to carry the full weight of the visual identity.
The centerpiece of the design is a whimsical hand-drawn line illustration that wraps continuously around the box. This was a deliberate choice to make the packaging feel dimensional and premium despite the single-color restriction. I paired this with expressive display type.
Typography did a lot of the heavy lifting here. With no color variation to create hierarchy, the type scale and weight contrast had to clearly guide the eye from brand name to product name to call to action without noise.
04 — Shopify Store Design & DevelopmentA conversion-focused e-commerce experience
Custom theme, full control
Started from a custom Shopify theme rather than an off-the-shelf template, giving full control over layout and brand expression from day one.
Action-first homepage
Shop Now CTAs appear early and often, capturing both the casual browser who needs a nudge and the ready buyer who knows what they want.
Packaging to screen
The same whimsical, color-forward identity from the physical packaging carries directly into the type, layouts, and color choices on screen.
Photography as a trust signal
Launching a D2C brand with no reviews, no press, and no word-of-mouth means trust has to be built through the design itself. I photographed all product and lifestyle images, giving the brand a consistent, high-quality visual identity that felt credible and warm. When a shopper lands on a product page for the first time, photography is often what converts hesitation into confidence, investing in that from day one was non-negotiable.
05 — Brand & ContentPhotography, social & beyond
In addition to the product and web experience, I created all original content for Splocks across Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, covering product photography, lifestyle photography, short-form video, animations, and marketing graphics.
Consistency was a must to build trust with a new audience.. Every piece of content was shot using natural light to keep the visual tone warm, approachable, and true to the brand's playful character. Natural light also made the product colors feel vibrant and accurate rather than studio-clinical, which matters when parents are making purchase decisions based on what they see in a feed or on a product page.
The content strategy supported both brand awareness and conversion, with photography pulling double duty across the Shopify storefront, Amazon listings, and social channels to maintain a unified look regardless of where a customer encountered the brand first.
