Case study
A streetwear brand built from one strange question, then put online
Shave the Frog is a client's philosophical streetwear label. I worked on their brand strategy, identity and content plan, then hand-built and deployed their website. The online store is not built yet.
The problem
Shave the Frog is a client's brand. It started as a phrase that makes people stop and ask what it means, and the idea behind it is a clothing label whose real product is that pause, a question you wear in public. That is hard to sell. My client needed a clear philosophy, rules for how it looks and sounds, a plan for what to post and when, and a website that feels like the brand. The site also had to show the first product drop and point buyers to a shop.
Constraints
- A new brand with no product photos yet. The five product images on the site are still placeholders.
- A self-hosted WordPress site already existed. The new design had to go live without destroying the store data inside it.
- Many visitors arrive on phones, so the mobile layout had to work as well as the desktop one.
- The online store is planned for Shopify and has not been built yet.
What I did
Strategy and brand
Working with the client, I wrote a brand blueprint that turns the phrase into a philosophy with four laws, a voice ("a friend who makes you think"), product tiers and a drop model. Small, infrequent releases each come with a written provocation, starting with Drop 001. Around it I produced a six-month master plan, a role-by-role strategy for their team, a four-week social plan for TikTok, Instagram and Facebook with captions and video scripts, a one-week launch campaign brief, and the first TikTok scripts. I also wrote detailed image prompts for merchandise mockups, from hoodies and caps to stickers and tumblers.
Design
The palette went through several rounds of the client's feedback. It began as earthy tones, moved to a retro 70s look, and settled as a vibrant "unified master palette" of frog green, hot magenta, solar orange and sunshine yellow on a dark base. The aim was joy pushing back against a dark mood. I paired Bebas Neue for display with Outfit for body text and Courier Prime for the vertical navigation. The site layout covers the hero, the drop, the koan, the four laws, the brand story, a gallery and The Pond community.
Engineering
I built their site by hand in HTML, CSS and JavaScript over six versions, with a sticky nav, a looping ticker, scroll reveals, scroll-tracking side navigation and an auto-glow loop on the four-law tiles for phones. I also ported the behavior into a Vite and React project as reusable hooks, so the site can grow into an app later. To launch, I deployed the static bundle to the hosting and pointed the domain's homepage at it. WordPress stayed intact underneath, so one line in the server config brings it back.
Outcome
The site is live at shavethefrog.com and serves the hand-built version 6 homepage. Commerce is not built yet. The shop section shows the Drop 001 pieces, but its buttons don't connect to a checkout, and the product photos are still to come. Sales, traffic and community growth have not been measured.
What I'd change next time
I'd lock the palette before producing campaign graphics and merchandise prompts, since each palette change meant redoing work. I'd also put the site under version control from the first prototype. The project's own recap lists Git setup as still open.