Ride Theme
A dynamic and distinct Sports theme
Company
Shopify
Role
Sr. Product Designer
Project Date
2022
About the project
Previously, the free Shopify themes were designed with different design styles such as minimalist. When this approach wasn’t beneficial for the merchants, the theme design strategy was shifted to being tailored to diverse industries.
I designed Ride Theme for merchants deeply dedicated to sports with a focus on niche products like Nike. Its distinctive page templates and asymmetrical layouts empower merchants to effectively showcase a range of products, teams, and everything in between.
Home page
About page
Discovery
I started with benchmarking the Sporting Goods segment where I established two distinct types of merchants. In contrast to classic e-commerce sites like Dick’s Sporting Goods, I leaned on renowned brands such as Nike.
I decided to use assets from two stores owned by the same merchant. Softech Boards specializes in crafting soft boards that break from the conventional surfboard design and FCS Fins is an award-winning team of surfers who thoroughly test their boards and fins. These surfers were directly involved in innovations for their products. This reminded me of Shopify’s first theme, SnowDevil, created by Tobi Lutke, which involved testing and personally selecting the snowboards.
Benchmarking trends
Art direction
The overarching emotion I aimed to evoke was utmost seriousness associated with sports, fervent passion, and the exhilaration of movement. Early versions of Ride extensively used accent colors, bold typography, and overlapping text and images. Kinetic typography was introduced to make a bold statement, along with the inclusion of floating type behind cards.
Challenges
After refining the art direction in Figma, I started to work within the theme editor to create the demo store, where it was highly restrictive for a designer. However, these limitations pushed me to be creative in using the available capabilities.
Explorations & Art direction
Outcome
Implementing any of these features, required a brand new setting within the theme editor. Many features such as overlapping images, bolder typeface and gifs to inject personality that were explored during Ride found their way into future roadmaps or integrated into the other themes.
Bolder typeface & overlapping images
Dynamic layout (gifs, emojis, hover states)
Impact
Given that most merchants use free themes, it had a significant impact on the overall experience for Shopify merchants.
“This is a fantastic theme with a ton of features & regular updates making it more amazing. I would highly recommend this theme for a modern, stylish brand! I’m not tempted to change themes anytime soon!”
“Shopify Ride Theme: A dynamic Sports theme” Avada Automation
“10 cool Shopify themes to elevate your game” BS Commerce