Kungyokudo Minimal Homepage

Kungyokudo is a traditional, Japanese fragrance shop that sells its potent selection of legendary scents from a centuries-old storefront and online. The main focus of their brand is to marry the old with the new. They want to function as an honored and valid Japanese fragrance shop, but at a scale big enough to take full advantage of digital technology and content.

Their site effectively conveys this duality across its interior. Here on the home page, the graphic navigational interface and HD photography serve as a powerful balance to the minimal traditionalism of the design’s content. The image itself is very evocative of the past, but the quality and interface of the site speak more to a certain complementary modernity.

Kungyokudo Minimal Website Design

The designer continues to develop this collisional balance on the “About” page, which tells the history of the shop and attempts to validate their ambitions for the future. The text details the way that the original founder challenged preconception, producing a store whose wares and resources far exceeded the quality and scope that anyone thought possible for the humble shop. Below the descriptive text, there is, once again, a selection of strong images whose contents evoke traditionalism, while their quality speaks to a certain modernity. This, in tandem with the nature of the text, elaborates the site’s generational duality another step forward, carrying greater user interest along with it.

Kungyokudo Minimal Map Design

Kungyokudo realizes its brand duality most fully on their locations page, which features a comprehensive map mechanic. Here, users can see the storefront in relation to them, and they can develop a list of directions to find the location. By embedding such a 21st century digital tool into this traditional fragrance shop’s website, the designer is instilling the company’s dualistic brand into the function of the site. In both look and mechanic, Kungyokudo’s site plays off of the relationship between old and new, creating a brand that can claim the advantages of both.

Kungyokudo is a minimal website design in the E-commerce & Retail and Manufacturing industries.