Two awards. One website. And a very happy team at Herdl! Our work on the Design4Retail (D4R) website, Ideas Made Possible, took home the People’s Lovie, voted for by the public, and a Silver Lovie Award for Websites & Mobile Sites: Architecture, Art & Design, chosen by a panel of industry experts.
The result lands against serious competition. The Lovie Awards drew nearly 1,000 entries from over 35 countries, plus 80,000 votes from 35,000 people. Winning with both the public and the jury is the part we’re proudest of. The Lovie Awards celebrate the best of European digital creativity, from websites and apps to advertising, video and podcasts. They launched in 2010 and come from the European arm of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), the same 3,000-plus member body that judges the Webby Awards.
Two routes lead to a win. Judges score every entry against the criteria for its category, then award Bronze, Silver or Gold. Separately, the public votes on the judges’ shortlist, and the finalist with the most votes in each category takes the People’s Lovie. One is expert approval, the other is popular support, and winning both means the professionals and the public agreed.
The Winning Website
Design4Retail is a retail design agency, and they had an ambitious brief: the brand was repositioning and the website had to follow to appeal to high-calibre, luxury retailers. The D4R team wanted to show off their work, create movement that holds a visitor’s attention, and keep the creative, pioneering personality that makes the agency an industry leader. They also wanted a site their own people could shape without waiting on a developer. We answered each point in the build.
The luxury positioning became a clean, grid-based layout where imagery gets room and nothing sits on top of it. Everything is modular, with a parallax effect adding depth, scroll-triggered animations, and a dark and light mode toggle that lets visitors choose how they view the work. Behind the scenes, a flexible system of pre-built blocks lets D4R’s team assemble and rearrange pages themselves. Above all, the site is a visual showcase of their work. The visuals lead, with full-bleed project footage opening the homepage and large-scale imagery giving every project the room to speak for itself.
Award-Winning Work
Veenali Shah-Patel, Marketing Manager at Design4Retail, had this to say:
“The Design4Retail website was ready for a refresh, and working with Herdl, our long-standing digital partner, was a natural choice. They approached the project methodically, bringing in sector knowledge and creativity to every part of the process. Winning the Silver People’s Lovie Award for Architecture, Art & Design is a fantastic achievement and a testament to the hard work, dedication and expertise of Dave, Ella and the wider Herdl team. Their contribution has been invaluable in bringing the new Design4Retail website to life, and it’s brilliant to see their efforts recognised on such a prestigious stage.“
Dave Bayliss, RevOps Manager at Herdl, adds:
“We’ve partnered with Design4Retail for over 13 years as their digital partner across multiple marketing and web projects. They approached us with an ambitious and exciting website brief – to redesign and reposition the brand to appeal to their target audience of high-calibre, luxury retailers. Everything from design to build was collaborative, and working with D4R in that way not only made the process enjoyable, but resulted in the creative, award-winning website you see today. Winning the Silver Lovie Award and the People’s Lovie is a testament to Veenali and Vanessa at D4R, whose high standards matched our own, and to the Herdl team, who applied their expertise at every stage of the project. A fantastic project that deserves this recognition.“
Thank you
Thank you to Design4Retail Ltd for the trust and the brief, to The Lovie Awards for the recognition, and to everyone who voted. You made the People’s Lovie happen.
Visit design4retail.co.uk to see the site in action. And if your brand needs a website that earns attention and keeps it, get in touch with us.