The beauty lies in the design

The rebranding of Douglas began in 2018 with an extensive corporate identity update. The focus was on the redesign of the 50-year-old logo, as well as a new, modern visual language, which was significantly influenced by campaign images by star photographer Peter Lindbergh. 

DEPT® came into play for the first time as part of this rebranding. Since the corporate identity update was primarily implemented for the print sector in the first step, Douglas needed a competent partner agency to adapt the new corporate identity from print to digital. Within this digital branding, we mainly translated colours, fonts and Peter Lindbergh’s photography into a digital context. In addition, our UX and UI experts developed a completely new icon set.

The next step was to make the newly developed CI visible. When it became clear that the relaunch of the Douglas online stores would take some time, but that the rebranding had to be experienced digitally as quickly as possible to ensure a consistent brand presence, DEPT® developed a facelift. 

The new fonts, colours, style elements and icons developed in the course of the rebranding and translated by us into a digital guideline, were used throughout the entire online shop. Spacing was recalculated and headers and footers were revised. With these adjustments, the DEPT® UX and UI team succeeded in helping the Douglas online shop achieve a measurable uplift in user experience. The facelift went live in 2018, the year of the Douglas-wide rebranding.

Parallel to the facelift, DEPT® started with the redevelopment of the new store. While the software development company Netconomy was responsible for the technical implementation of the Douglas relaunch, DEPT® developed the UX and UI design. As part of the relaunch, DEPT® provided an uplift in the area of joy of use, for example, with the help of animated micro interactions.

The first go-lives were celebrated in 2019 with the relaunch of the Douglas online stores in Switzerland, Austria and Poland. Based on these comparatively small markets, the upcoming German launch could be optimised thanks to the learnings generated. To this day, we are involved in the continuous feature development of the Douglas online shops.

In contrast to a pattern library or a style guide, a design system not only contains reusable interface components, but is a comprehensive description of the cross-channel design language of a brand. With the help of a design system, a wide variety of digital products, websites and apps can be uniformly designed.

At the end of 2019, Douglas decided to implement our digital design system as a future “single source of truth”. Within the design system, all design elements are created, described in detail, and made accessible to employees, so that they can be used across countries for the design of various components of the Douglas online shop. The in-house design system thus leads to a sustainable design process that is constantly documented using the zeroheight and Figma tools.

The demand for comprehensive online advice is visibly increasing, with the store closures caused by the Corona pandemic having greatly accelerated this trend. In March 2020, Douglas successfully launched the live shopping channel Douglas LIVE. After the summer break, the beauty retailer took the format to the next level with Douglas LIVE – THE LIVE CHANNEL FOR BEAUTY using the new technology Livebuy and a completely new look.

For the launch and the daily shows, we created the new digital branding including logo and style elements. Content assets as well as videos for Douglas LIVE are provided by DEPT®. To date, DEPT® has created content assets for almost 350 shows and accompanies Douglas on its way to becoming an on-stop inspiration platform for beauty & healthcare.

• Development of a scalable, reliable e-commerce platform – multilingual, multi-currency, multi-market
• Fully integrated loyalty programme with more than 44 million loyalty card holders
• Implementation of a design system that can be used across countries