Lacello Design
Bon-Ton Stores
The Bon-Ton stores acquired the Elder-Beerman company in the fall of 2003 and began the process of integrating the two companies into one. An important part of that integration involved the melding of two disparate web sites into one unified whole.
The existing Bon-Ton site had been designed around a diamonds theme, based on the bullet in the Bon-Ton's logo. I felt that the end result, while unique, had a "clunky" feel to it that did not make the best use of screen real estate and limited the ways in which the company's best asset-- their products-- could be displayed.
For the redesign, I sought to retain the diamond theme of the company identity, but in smaller, less obtrusive ways throughout the site-- in buttons, icons, and the like. Although the balance of the page remained about the same, the new design allowed for much greater emphasis to be placed on the most important thing-- the product.