Championing entertainment the way it should be

For over 20 years, VIZIO has been committed to making high-quality affordable entertainment. Smart TVs, sound bars, even a built-in, free digital streaming platform—they make it all for everyone, and don’t skimp on the quality.

But the brand’s digital experience didn’t accurately reflect this commitment, nor could people buy products directly from the site. VIZIO.com needed to reflect the brand’s ethos of “entertainment for all,” as well as champion individual product stories to enable confidence in visitors looking to buy.

BASIC/DEPT® refocused VIZIO’s brand architecture on what we know they cared most about: the customer, the product and the experience. With it came a more down-to-earth brand personality that directed the marketing team to speak truly as people who love entertainment, talking to other people who love entertainment.

From vivid colourful scenes to robust enveloping sounds, people turn to entertainment to feel immersed in something different. BASIC/DEPT® used that aspiration to evoke sensory experiences when designing VIZIO’s new site.

The site was warmed to create a more inviting atmosphere for visitors. Curved elements, lightweight typography and subtle hairlines mimicked VIZIO’s refined industrial design style, adding an elevated feel while allowing content to shine.

BASIC/DEPT® teamed up with VIZIO’s production agency of record, PARTNER, to create all-new photography that raised the elegance of their products. TVs and sound bards were snapped in authentic, warmer scenes to make visualising any of their models in any space easy.

BASIC/DEPT® also worked with PARTNER to create new visuals for CG animation. BASIC/DEPT® provided direction to play with light and shadow in order to highlight hardware features and create more contrast.

BASIC/DEPT® created page narratives that highlighted the features of each TV and sound bar, elevating different features across products to educate and speak to different consumer types. This, paired with a modular design system, enable the VIZIO team to ultimately build bespoke stories across their site. 

As users moved across product pages, BASIC/DEPT® surfaced awards and accolades higher up and gave real customer reviews more prominence as concrete proof points to each Series’ quality.

Across PLPs and Search, BASIC/DEPT® simplified the tech specs and made it easier to compare models for immediate understanding and scanability.

BASIC/DEPT® was developing the final product, but not directly implementing it for VIZIO. The client needed a final product that was flexible and easy to customise without having to write new code.

To achieve this, our team used React and Storybook to build framework-agnostic code for individual modules and components. This way, VIZIO could implement what they needed seamlessly into their framework, whether it was Adobe Experience Manager or another program. Storybook allowed the VIZIO team to test components in real time in isolated moments, so they could modify features, copy or content how they needed.

Both teams were working across timezones in separate working environments. The BASIC/DEPT® team developed the module library independently, then met with VIZIO developers on a daily basis to collaborate on any updates and changes necessary to ensure the components and modules met the client’s needs. This collaboration was a blend of daily standups, Figma comments and JIRA ticketing.