H.L. BROWN

Founded in Sheffield in 1861, H.L. Brown is one of Yorkshire's leading specialist jewellers, offering a wide range of antique, period and contemporary jewellery, in gold, silver and diamond. Unlike most jewellers, the company has a buying office in Antwerp - the world’s largest market for polished diamonds - where the directors personally inspect the quality of every single diamond purchased.

THE CHALLENGE

Working in conjunction with brand partners Rolex, Über’s task was to completely refresh the H.L. Brown website, both technically and aesthetically. The development of the site had to be updated to conform with current ecommerce standards, with special consideration given to user experience and accessibility. From a design perspective, the client wanted a more contemporary look that wouldn’t compromise H. L. Brown’s well-respected history and heritage.

THE SOLUTION

The front-end code was completely rebuilt to make it fully-responsive across multiple screen and device types. Structural changes were also made to bring the user journey in line with current expectations. A H.L. Brown live Facebook feed was implemented to allow news updates to be easily manageable. Über worked closely with Rolex to ensure that the integration of their products met brand guidelines.

The website design featured a largely clean and minimalist look, thus allowing the products to have real standout on screen. Careful consideration was given to the use of colours, typeface, icons and page layout. A dark purple suggests a certain traditional luxury and elegance which is given modernity through the use of a secondary, lighter purple tone. Similarly, the chosen modern serif typeface also keeps past and present in harmony. A suite of simple, graphic icons were also created for clarity and ease of use, to ultimately allow the customer to shop online easily.