Concept Spineout · Bookshop · Long Beach

An independent bookshop you browse spine out

A bookshop whose home page is a shelf you pull books off, plus a matcher that picks your next read.

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Spineout home page on a desktop screen — Spineout is a made-up brand. I designed and built it to show what a bookshop store can look like; the people, prices, results and reviews on it are samples.

Spineout home page on a phone — Spineout is a made-up brand. I designed and built it to show what a bookshop store can look like; the people, prices, results and reviews on it are samples.

The brief

Spineout is a made-up independent bookshop on 4th Street in Long Beach with a staff-picked shelf and a monthly book box.

An indie shop can’t beat the big stores on price or range. What it has is taste: the joy of browsing a shelf someone picked.

Industry: Bookshop
Type: Online store
Pages: 14
Fonts: Big Shoulders Display, Instrument Sans
Colors: Stamp greenInkPage greyWhite

The idea

The spine

Bookstores shelve most books spine out, so that’s how this one sells. The home page is a shelf you pull books off, each spine is as thick as the book has pages, and the “What next?” matcher pulls three spines out for you. Ink and white with one stamp green; Big Shoulders, narrow and made for spines, with Instrument Sans.

Design decisions

Browse like a shelf

Tap a spine and the book comes off the shelf with its author, first line and price, so browsing feels like the shop.

A matcher, not a feed

A few questions about mood and length pull three books, each with a reason.

Made-up books

Every title, author, first line and cover is made up and drawn in code, so no real book or author appears.

What next?

The same page on a desktop and a phone. Try it live

What’s built

Interactive shelf with spines sized by page count
“What next?” book matcher
Paperback or hardcover and gift wrap options
Monthly book box
Bag and demo checkout that sends nothing

Pages to try

Everything works in the browser. Forms and checkout don’t send anything.

Want one like it?

A store like this starts at $15,000.

Your site gets its own idea, the way this one does, built around your business and your customers. You get one fixed price after a free call, and you work with me directly from the first sketch to launch.

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