Mor Furniture

Overview

For over 40 years, Mor Furniture has been committed to offering high-quality furniture at an outstanding value.

Mor Furniture started in 1977 in San Diego, California as a single water bed store and quickly grew to multiple locations.

In 1983, the company opened a location in Spokane, Washington, followed by Portland, Oregon in 1984. By 1987, there were stores located throughout San Diego, Portland, Spokane, and Seattle, Washington.

During the 1990s, Mor Furniture grew along the West Coast, under the name Bedroom Superstore, with locations throughout Washington, Oregon, and California, including Bakersfield and Fresno. In 2000, the first Mor Furniture locations opened in Reno, Boise, and Phoenix and we have been growing ever since!

Responsibilities

• Maintained production work daily to include website, email, social, display ads, digital and print signage, billboards, and all other customer-facing design assets.
• Updated brand guidelines and maintained its relevance as needed.
• Implemented a studio for in-house photography.
• Created a photography process; to include the coordination, planning, and execution of weekly photoshoots.
• Implemented a digital asset manager (DAM) to assist in the housing and organization of the company’s photo and video assets.
• Assisted in the UX of a new website and continued to grow and provide knowledge in our re-platforming efforts.
• Design internal workflow and assets for employees.

Year

2018 – 2022

Position

Design & Photography Manager

Branding

My contributions to the Mor Furniture brand were to refresh the existing brand guide and to perform regular maintenance as needed on assets that didn’t fit going forward.

I took a complementary color scheme and chose to go more monochromatic with images that use the brand’s primary color or subtle gradients with the primary and secondary colors defined in the brand guide. I then used hierarchy within the weights of text. This look served to simplify the customer view and look modern while calling more attention to the message.

Click here to review the brand guide.
Note: the brand guide is an ever-changing document, meant to change based on market and business needs.

UX

My role in UX came about as an initiative to help correct some of the old site’s errors. I reached out to a few friends for guidance and created a plan to go forward. Albeit an ad hoc UX process, I tried to document and follow as strict of a process as I could.

I first researched what we had in production at the time.
Next, I structured a road map for deliverables based on company needs. Eventually, everything would change, but what I wanted to establish was how different pages could be structured to market similarly across the board.
Then I concepted and strategized how we wanted our new site to work in wireframes. Taking into consideration customer flow from beginning to end. During this process I taught myself Sketch, this was the platform our developing/consulting team was on and it was necessary to use for collaboration.
Lastly, creation! I created page after page and customer funnel after funnel. With guidance from peers, the needs of our business, and perimeters from our developers, we finally launched a new site.

The fun didn’t stop there though, to make a predetermined launch window we ended up leaving out certain funnels that we quickly returned to afterward. I continue to provide UX design and direction and I’ve broken down the things I’ve learned as a UX designer. My goal is to understand the users and their needs accurately and deeply, creating a design that is useful, functional, and desirable as possible.

RESEARCH and gather the present state
STRUCTURE and setup the content of the project
CONCEPT AND STRATEGY
CREATE, evaluate and iterate deliverables

Studio Creation

In line with refreshing the brand guide, there was a need to create our own in-house studio. The process served to double our photography efforts and align all photos on-site to look the same.

To accomplish this, I first looked at the current process to find where efficiencies could be made. From there I took the needs of the business and drafted a proposal to use a storage section of the loading dock to be re-finished as a studio.

This was a large undertaking and took a lot of multi-department effort, feel free to contact me and ask about the details of this endeavor.

Studio Direction

After the creation of our studio process, the real work started.

I clearly define the rules around our photography and added them to our pre-existing photography chapter within the brand guide. This allowed us to bring new photographers, stylists, and studio workers up to speed very quickly.

From there I not only directed the process of the studio but worked with team members to style the sets. As the team grew I hired a stylist and was able to oversee the production on a weekly basis. The direction of the studio and the process included:

Working with Merchandising to coordinate weekly products to be photographed. Expanded:
- Receiving incoming products from the warehouse and making sure they were Q/A’d by the Product team.
- Requesting ISTs for missing products to complete sets from floor to be shot in-studio.
- Reviewing products on-site & within our DAM to fill missing images and color stories.
Managing a photographer, studio assistant, and movers in the studio during the shoot.
Requesting and editing images from the photographer.
The creation of and management of our company’s DAM.
Overseeing and adapting the studio and its process as necessary based on business needs.