Official Nasa Gear Brand Refresh
UX Designer, Visual Designer, Information Architect
Official NASA Gear is an e-commerce merchandise store owned and operated by the NASA Ames Exchange, an instrumentality of the US Government, located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. The brand was created to support NASA employees, with 100% of the proceeds going directly to employee morale, welfare, and recreation (MWR) activities. Impressed with the work done by Oxcart Assembly on the Launch America Space-X project, they approached us with a desire to elevate the aesthetics, professionalism, and usability of their existing site to showcase better some of the higher-quality products they were beginning to sell. The current site looked dated, with an inconsistent style, poor responsiveness, and oddly placed text overlays along with a confusing navigation structure:
In designing the new look for the brand, I wanted to utilize the classic NASA "Worm" logo, beloved by designers, to help elevate the "cool" factor of the site. The final design was based on guidelines from the 1976 NASA Graphics Standard Manual, explicitly taking inspiration from the Cover Design specifications and the Ames Research Center Tech Briefs. Leaving the word "Official" off the logo also helped get this design approved faster, a request from the client:
I chose a new BigCommerce theme that had a sleek and modern feel, better readability, a mega-menu, and a product card feature which would give them a way to promote new products and specials without having to solely rely on the clunky automated carousel. The site map was revised, streamlining navigation and getting rid of categories such as "Novelties" that did not fit with the new aesthetic. Featured products were given unique photo treatments and custom product cards and carousel banner images were created, each with its own distinct design elements, along with numerous small custom CSS tweaks:
After the final brand/style guide was delivered, the partnership continued with selling exclusive Oxcart Assembly merchandise on the site. I have project managed the rollout for a series of limited edition NASA posters created by artist Neal Williams and NASA-branded gear from Habitat skateboards.
"I am very stoked at how it turned out, it's extremely professional and All looks outstanding."
