The Wonders of Kanye West's Redesigned Yeezy Supply Shop
"The chief enemy of creativity is good sense." —Pablo Picasso
We're living in a world of endless creativity, where people think the wheel can't be reinvented, just optimized. But our nation is being completely revamped by the eccentrics of our world—Musk with electric cars, Trump with politics and democracy, Kanye West with music, churches, shoes and now website experiences. The rules of creativity are being rewritten by people committed to experiencing the world in its entirety, as they see it.
Kanye West is someone who doesn't fail to disrupt flat categories with his lack of good sense. Kanye is the first e-retailer to set sail and find out that the internet is not flat, but indeed round.
The upcoming redesign of the Yeezy Supply shop—as described by Fast Company—is a truly gamified experience that doubles as a retail shop, a dressing room and a place to dig deeper into the history of Yeezy, from the models to clothing, and more. The site flips the traditional 2-D, one-way communication, information dumping-ground website model, and has turned it into a 360-degree event.
See West's nine-minute documentary about the new site below.
Kanye has a straightforward objective: sell products and create human connections online. With that in mind, this website has been hyper simplified to drive people into the purchase action, a very functional user experience, but done in an extremely creative way, pulling cues from '80s/'90s video games. Kanye takes the frills out of the user experience to make it more about human interaction.
As the world will become increasingly reliant on the internet as a looming round two of shelter in place goes into effect, people are craving new online experiences that resemble real life. Especially in retail, where touching, trying and talking to sales reps are a crucial part of the experience. They're also craving connection, reassurance, and entertainment more than ever, something the Yeezy store produces successfully.
As a creative industry, we always strive to make the most innovative work, ordinarily landing as a longer-form TV concept—and there are times and places for that type of work. It's easy to write off lo-fi, simple and streamlined ideas as boring or not award-winning material. But what point is an award if it doesn't achieve something new for humankind?
