Melissa & Doug

Art Direction & Design    |    Agency: BORN

Founded by kids at heart and parents of six, Melissa and Doug Bernstein, Melissa & Doug is a toy company dedicated to making products that inspire open-ended thinking and encourage kids to see new possibilities. The new site needed to shine a light on their mission to "Take Back Childhood" for today's over-scheduled children as well as show the personality of the brand with unexpected and playful touches.

The homepage needed to showcase the brand's mission and uncover their many many categories in digestible and fun ways.

We had a lot of fun adding joy and movement to the site. This responsive toy finder is a great example of the ways we took typical browsing behavior and made something fun to play with.

I had a lot of fun thinking up fun ways to make the site interact with our front end team. Here's a video of the elastic timeline on Melissa & Doug's 'Our History' page that was inspired by of their Lacing Cards.

I worked closely with Melissa & Doug on the direction of their new phototography. The below gallery shows our concept for kids playing with toys in their own ways. Pots & Pans can become a drum set, a flower basket and more when left to a child's imagination.

Melissa & Doug have a huge breadth of product. Some categories like Arts & Crafts have loads of sub-categories. This category page template allows for a smart, visual breakdown of the sub-categories within to help customers navigate and discover categories.

Melissa & Doug are brimming with play ideas. 'Shop The Room' is a place for M&D to create inspirational content in the form of shoppable, themed playrooms.

The listing pages get right to the point, trading big headers for integrated, category-related content within the product grid. UI is playful and accessible.

The product detail page is full of fun details. The product price is counted using M&D's play money in the same way kids do in school. Drawing from the content on product packaging, you can find out exactly what comes in the box and discover unexpected play activities. 

None of the fun touches or visual navigation on the site are lost on small screens.

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