Mycos: Design Case Study

[INTRO: SHROOM SHROOM, TO THE RACES!]

I have a friend that has a small mushroom business that he wants to get into. Everytime he comes over, he beings a container filled with mushrooms with him and sets it outside. “I’ve got to make sure these grow correctly in the right conditions”. Depending on how you look at it, the man is passionate or obsessed. I on the other hand was also filled with second hand passion so I offerred to make him a website/design to help him brand and evolve his store. And just like that, we were off to the races!

[HE’S A FUNGI]

My friend wants to start with something simple, a mascot logo that doubles as a sticker he could ship with his mushrooms to increase brand awareness. Since mushrooms are not the prettiest flower on the block, my approach was to make the mascot look cute and approachable. You can see my design sketches below.

Sketch process of the mycos mushroom mascot

I couldn’t decide between two color schemes that consisted of green/orange which represents nature and energy vs blue/pink/purple which represents calmness and approachability. My friend really liked the contrast with the pink and the blue as the colors as the contrast made it pop more.

[MUSH-ROOM FOR DESIGN]

To be perfectly honest I was working on both the design on the logo at the same time. So featured below is a light and a dark theme of the website. (You can probably guess what we went with). Because it was a landing page, I put alot of importance on making mushrooms seem beneficial, healthy, and nothing to be scared of. The first section after the hero, I wanted to include a closeup of a mushroom and list out the many benefits. Looking at it so close I wanted to appeal to the user’s sense of sight and make them feel “hey, mushrooms aren’t so bad — and look at all these benefits!”, leading them to learn more about mushrooms.

I like to learn toward “lighter designs” but we went with the dark theme

My friend does have an eye for growing mushrooms and he does make it seem like it’s really hard to grow. Part of his business model includes grow kits that are fairly priced so that begineers can get into it and so he doesn’t have to grow it himself! Talk about a win-win situation. I think it’s important in the best sellers section or elsewhere we include these introductory kits for something beginners can start with.

[BEST IN THE MUSHROOM KINGDOM]

Showcasing mushroom show kits!

[OY, STER’s MORE?]

Finally we have the frequently asked questions section. Sometimes doing research is not enough, and a place for faq’s to be answered is also a great way for beginners to see what to watch out for. In short, the theme for this landing page is to get people to feel more interested in the mushroom kingdom.

FAQ section featuring an accordion

[SPORE ME THE DETAILS]

This is it for the time being! Tune in next time as we go over implementation details on the ecommerce site!