Case Study - Zibbet
Helping creative entrepreneurs grow their business.
Zibbet's journey started in 2009 when they launched their marketplace for handmade goods, powered by a global community of independent artists, crafters and vintage collectors. It's a place where you can buy the most amazing, unique and inspiring products that can't be found anywhere else. Today however, they're working on something new.
Jono from Zibbet reached out to us to design a multi-channel sales platform for their existing audience — artists, makers and craftspeople alike. The goal is to provide more exposure, awareness and sales by offering a convenient, effective distribution, a synchronised inventory management system and simple accounting.
Do what you love
Zibbet's vision is to be the #1 household name for creative entrepreneurs wanting to sell online... their mission is to help out customers achieve their definition of success, empower them to succeed and save them more time so they can spend it what they love.
The marketplace and new platform exists to give creative people an outlet, an escape from their 9 to 5 to do what they love. Real creatives often get lost in the noise of outsourcing and mass manufacturing, ignored in a saturated market. But for hobbyists and entrepreneurs, Zibbet lets you make your own journey.
The hand-crafted feel
The original Zibbet logo was designed with “handmade” in mind — the mark bearing semblance to an origami swan and the wordmark purely handwritten. The new wordmark has a simplified architecture — from the original four layers to a single outline of formal cursive, with emphasis on the clarity around the “e”, the curves of the “b”s and the cursive nature of the “z” and “t”.
The revision of the swan was to create a cleaner, simpler and more balanced shape. We cut down on the number of angles and enhanced the form in areas such as the wing, for increased readability at smaller sizes. The new logo mark focuses on consistency and coherence around block weights and angles — its increased geometrical precision lending an aura of reliability and trust.
The new colour palette is well-balanced and saturated, giving a sense of vibrancy. The colours are warm and friendly, but not quite pastel-y. Tasty, but not overly sweet.
We chose Tiempos Headline by Klim Type Foundry for the heading font as it seemed to add a feeling of creative flair and helps avoid the stale all-sans cliche of the modern web application. We selected Proxima Soft for the body typeface for its playful rounded nature and throwback to the original Zibbet product typeface.
Creative entrepreneurs
Zibbet's mission is to help creative entrepreneurs sell more, which formed the basis of their original marketplace. But managing multiple sales channels can be a headache, which is why Zibbet pivoted to an aggregate inventory management system which combines synchronised sales channels with national / international shipping and order fulfilment.
The new Zibbet dashboard provides a high-level overview of your productivity as a creator. You can quickly see your pending orders, recent sales and monthly revenue, as well as get some tailored tips direct from the Zibbet team on how to sell more. Plus, you get to learn how to say "hello" in every language... what's not to love?
We started off from a component level to create a design system, setting the Zibbet team up to move faster as they build up their design and engineering teams. The quality of the design system would dictate how effective the new teams can be in designing and developing, so we were going to invest in the foundations and make each component look and feel awesome.
Fancy that
We also had the chance to work on the new blog and marketing site. They're both rich with beautiful, textured illustrations that convey the power of Zibbet in the hands of a creative entrepreneur. While the marketing site has more vibrant colours and focuses on product literacy and conversion, the blog takes on a more "arts and crafts" vibe and focuses on education through courses, blogs and tools.
References
We're singing your praises — appreciate all your hard work. More than happy with what we've been shown. Thanks so much for your help on this and for a great job.
— Mark Jones, Product Manager at Zibbet
Really appreciate all your hard work on it. I'm super happy with the result! We are all stoked.
— Jonathan Peacock, Founder of Zibbet