Gifteehub

• Personal without a long form

  Recommendations needed enough about the recipient to be useful, without a questionnaire that scares people off.

• Two sources of ideas

  Products from online shops and ideas from community members had to sit side by side and still read clearly.

• A brand from scratch

  The beta needed a mark, palette and illustration style that felt friendly and giftable.

• Learning as you go

  The service had to keep refining what it knew about each giftee.

1. What does a giver already know about the recipient that a shop doesn't?
2. Which interests can be picked by sight instead of typed?
3. How do we ask a follow-up question without interrupting browsing?
4. What makes someone share a gift idea with strangers?

The mark combines a gift box and a script g in four construction steps, set beside a handwritten Gifteehub.com wordmark. Two greens and a yellow lead the palette, backed by a pale green, black and two greys, and the lockup works on light, white and charcoal grounds.

A set of line illustrations with green fills went from pencil sketch to final. They explain the service at a glance: ideas and gifts, shopping online, and a gift surrounded by the people who suggested it.

The beta sign-up promises instant gift recommendations from the best online shops and the community, with Facebook or email sign-up and a "maybe later" exit. Sharing an idea takes three steps: describe the gift, say who it suits, add final details. Interests are chosen from photo tiles, with a progress meter and a skip link.

Interests are picked from photo tiles, and sharing an idea is previewed as three short steps before it starts.

Each person you buy for gets a profile. Interest chips sit under their name, age, relationship and birthday, and a grid of recommendations follows, with discounts, save and favourite actions. Inline cards ask yes, not sure or no about new interests, so the list keeps getting sharper.

The inline card asks one yes-or-no question and the grid reshuffles around the answer.

One template handles shop products and community ideas. It holds a gallery, the price with the date it was checked, save, favourite or junk, a full description and two rows of related ideas to keep exploring.

One template serves shop products and community ideas, with the date each price was checked.

• Start from the person. Designing for the recipient instead of the product changed every screen that followed.
• Ask small questions. Quick yes or no cards taught the system more than a long profile form would have.
• Draw before you have customers. Illustration gave a young brand warmth before it had any real customers to show.