Codifying a viral brand without losing its edge
Translating Urban Sophistication's social-fueled cult energy into a documented identity, an editorial commerce experience, and a marketing engine its founders could finally step away from.
Company
Urban Sophistication
Industry
eCommerce—consumer tech accessories & apparel
Role
Creative Director & Studio Lead Agency-side at Diamond Hook
Services
Web & Experience Design, UX/UI, Visual & Verbal Strategy, Brand Identity System, Digital Art Direction, Interaction & 3D Direction, Content Architecture, Creative Operations
Team
Project Manager & Strategist: Dani Jacobson, Designer: Irina Spork, Content Strategist & Copywriter: Alexandra Toto, Developers: Ned Brennan & Usman Pervez
Outcomes at a glance
Unified the visual identity across site and brand channels, defining a design system the team could extend across marketing and eCommerce
Launched a custom Shopify experience that married editorial polish with eCommerce essentials
Extended visual design into high-performing campaign assets, driving +28% email revenue and +5% SMS CVR
Introduced design ops models that tightened workflow and delivery, setting the foundation for 6× scope expansion
Context & Brief
An effortlessly cool brand that wasn't translating beyond Instagram
Urban Sophistication's effortless aesthetic lived entirely in its founders' heads, and as the brand scaled, that became the bottleneck.
Challenge
Urban Sophistication's social voice and cult status outpaced its digital infrastructure. The site couldn't sustain traffic, scale visuals, or express its emerging brand maturity.
What wasn't working
Effortlessly cool worked on social, but felt flat or generic when applied to email and the website, channels that needed real storytelling, conversion craft, and eCommerce best practice
Elad and Neta's taste was the brand. None of it was documented, which meant every asset still routed back through them
Verbal identity was almost nonexistent. The brand had short, sharp social captions but nothing to support longer-form web copy, brand education emails, or product descriptions
Objective
Translate an effortless social presence into a mature brand system, performance-driven digital strategy, and premium, large-scale Shopify site, without losing its edge.
What we set out to do
Define a uniform visual identity and articulate a succinct, effortless verbal identity, both written down and both teachable
Apply that identity across email and SMS as a strategic, conversion-focused program
Design and develop a Shopify site that felt as editorial as their feed while landing the eCommerce essentials (reviews, social proof, accounts, upsells, loyalty)
Contraints
Three things bounded the work: whose taste counted, how hard the voice could push, and who would be running it after we left. None of them moved, so the system had to be built to fit them.
What we had to design around
The founders' taste was the source of truth, and they couldn't be the bottleneck for everything. Whatever we built had to eventually run without them
A thin line on voice: persuasive enough to convert, and never salesy or forced. "Too cool" carried the weight of a brand value
A small in-house team with growth plans, so we needed to embed alongside them and stay through delivery
Strategy & Approach
Translate founder taste into a system the team could run
Three parallel workstreams: extract the unspoken aesthetic, document the visual system, and build a verbal identity that could carry beyond captions.
Extract what was already in their heads
Opened with a brand discovery session built around getting Elad and Neta to articulate the unspoken, the effortless coolness driving every decision
Helped the founders pin down what "on-brand" actually meant, and gave the rest of the team and partners shared language to use it
Build the visual identity around how they already worked
Pulled references in a focused exercise tied directly to the workshop outputs: patterned grids broken by image and text, oversized typography used with restraint, heavy negative space for emphasis
Distilled into a light brand board: typography and hierarchy, grayscale palette and usage rules, design staples like button styling
Kept the system tight enough for their team to apply without over-engineering it. The goal was teachability
Give them a voice that could carry beyond captions
Defined the brand voice with a few guiding descriptors: evocative, aspirational yet conversational, cool, succinct
Built a vocabulary around the product: adjectives like plush, nostalgic, tactile; verbs like experience, glide, slide, elevate
Workshopped one-liners and motifs that could plug into any channel: "Define by feel," "...with us," "A unique experience of the ordinary," and the "Feels like..." framework
Solutions & Delivery
An editorial commerce experience & a marketing engine to match
A custom Shopify site that married editorial polish with eCommerce essentials, plus an email and SMS program built to convert without losing the effortless tone.
TL;DR
What we did
Visual and verbal identity documentation
Shopify site with editorial design, eCommerce essentials, and interactive features
Email program of lifecycle flows around Shopify triggers
SMS program (concise, conversion-driven flows)
Loyalty and rewards program with dedicated landing page
Embedded production workflow with the in-house team
How I led
Directed the visual and verbal identity system end-to-end, holding consistency across email, SMS, and the site
Led creative concept and direction for the site's signature features: "try it on," 3D case preview, and maintainable hanger showcase
Designed brand and eCommerce as one system, wiring verbal identity to lifecycle triggers so storytelling and conversion reinforced each other
Guided the founders into articulating their own aesthetic, turning instinctive taste into language the team could use without them
Recruited additional dev talent and embedded into the client's own Monday and Figma workflows
Email: brand storytelling that converted
Lifecycle flows built around Shopify triggers: tight by default, expansive when storytelling earned the room.
SMS: conversion copy that stayed effortless
Persuasive flows on Shopify lifecycle triggers, written to convert without breaking the "too cool" rule.
Website: editorial feel & eCommerce essentials, no compromise
A custom Shopify build pairing signature interactive features ("try it on," 3D case preview, maintainable hanger showcase) with fully on-brand eCommerce essentials from reviews to loyalty.
Visual & verbal identity: written down, finally
A light brand board and verbal identity guide, with patterns the team could repeat on their own.
Working inside their team, not parallel to it
Production tracked in Monday, custom review badges built into Figma, and creative art directed alongside their in-house team.
Outcomes & Impact
A brand the team could finally run without the founders
The new identity and web system gave Urban Sophistication a flexible platform for both cultural expression and commercial clarity.
Digital marketing success: >5% SMS, 57x SMS ROI, +28% email revenue
A Shopify experience that retained the editorial feel of the brand's social presence while passing standard eCommerce best practice on accounts, social proof, and conversion craft
A documented visual and verbal identity their in-house team could now extend without us
Elad Yam
Director of Creative
The team really understood our vision and brought it to life.