Product configurator website for a bespoke binder: Branded Covers

A single branded hardback cover depends on the binding system, the size, the material, the colour and the number of pages. The page count sets the spine width, which decides the binding parts and the machine. Quantity sets the price. Branded Covers is a new brand from the binding and foiling business Opus UK. It sells that product to architects, wealth managers, design studios and interior designers, who shouldn't need to know any of it. We designed the identity and built the website on WordPress, with the complexity moved out of sight.

Why not just use a form?

The usual way to sell a product like this is a long form with a drop-down for every variable. In Opus UK's experience, too many people gave up when asked for details they didn't know.

So the site asks simple questions instead, such as "Pick a material" and "How many pages?" Behind them, it is built to work out the rest: the spine, the cover size, the consumables, the machine and the price for the quantity ordered, with discounts as orders get bigger. It also handles personalisation, such as foiling or printing on the cover. The customer only thinks about what they want the finished cover to look like.

Why does one website need two journeys?

Branded Covers sells in two ways.

• Direct. A firm looking for high-end printed presentation finds the site. It can have its covers produced by Branded Covers, or buy the covers and a binding machine to produce its own documents in house.
• Through partners. Referral partners introduce their clients, who get an offer linked to that partner.

Both journeys are built on the same product logic.

Who is the brand for?

Firms that still want something to put in a client's hand. In our view, when the service is refined and designed, the proposal it arrives in should be too. Opus UK already served some of these firms. Branded Covers gave that part of the business its own name and its own offer.

The identity pairs a serif with the weight of a printed monograph and an isometric book symbol that reads like a technical drawing: the finished cover and the machinery behind it. The logo is a flat, solid ink rather than a metallic effect, so photography of real foiling and finished covers does the selling. It has to work debossed on a leather spine as well as on a phone screen. The website follows the brand: editorial, with curated photography and small movements in some images to give a sense of the material.

If your product is simple to buy in person but hard to buy online, that is a logic problem as much as a design one. Our Modernise Infrastructure page explains how we approach it, or email studio@mouriaux.com.

Written by Tom Le Mesurier, Principal, Mouriaux.