SWAROVSKI ATELIER
The Faceted Interface
Art Direction
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UX/UI Design
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Product Strategy
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Launch Strategy
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Art Direction + UX/UI Design + Product Strategy + Launch Strategy +
CLIENT
Swarovski Group
ROLE
UX/UI Designer
SECTOR
Omni Channel Retail
TEAM
Creative, UX, Strategy, Technology, Content
THE CHALLENGE
Swarovski told its story through more than 20 separate websites. Atelier Swarovski, the Crystal Palace design projects, Swarovski Entertainment, Swarovski TV and the brand site each spoke for one part of the business, and none spoke for the whole. Many didn't meet usability standards, and few worked well on phones or tablets.
The brief was to replace them with a single flagship for the Swarovski Group. It needed to hold the brand story and heritage, designer collaborations, film, corporate responsibility, careers and press, with Atelier Swarovski fully shoppable inside it. The site had to serve very different audiences at once, from consumers and journalists to job seekers, business partners and the board. It also had to work on desktop, tablet and mobile, in multiple languages.
THE IDEA
We began with discovery workshops across the business units. They surfaced eight themes, from "it is difficult to find what you are looking for" to "so much content is produced and then lost". Those themes became the working brief for everything that followed. We translated Swarovski's brand essence, Everyday Extraordinary, into three digital principles:
• Precision: product shown in high definition, with the craftsmanship visible.
• Clarity: simple navigation, and nothing said that doesn't need saying.
• Intrigue: motion and discovery that invite people to look further.
The look took its cue from a fashion magazine rather than a corporate site: black and white, Futura set large, bold headlines over minimal copy, and imagery given room. Of the two routes we presented, Swarovski chose Less & More for its clean, image-led layouts and social integration.
Underneath sat a modular system. It was a library of master templates on a 12-column grid, covering articles, landing pages, an interactive heritage timeline, an events calendar, a store finder, careers, and the full Atelier shop from product listing to checkout. Each business unit could tell its own story in a shared language. Every template was designed for desktop, tablet and mobile, then documented in a style guide Swarovski could build on.
