
Soukie Modern approached me in mid-2022 regarding their need to modernize their existing online shop, as they were looking to start leveraging e-commerce to show potential buyers their expansive collection of vintage and contemporary Moroccan rugs.

After some time getting to know the company and the founder, Taib Lotfi, I set out to design a website as expressive and beautiful as their offerings.

![Soukie Modern shop page](/media/soukie-modern/soukie-shop.png)

Given the large format and level of detail of the rugs, having large product images front-and-center was definitely at top of mind throughout the design process. We wanted potential buyers to see each rug in as much detail as possible.

![Soukie Modern product page](/media/soukie-modern/soukie-product.png)

![Soukie Modern workshops page](/media/soukie-modern/soukie-workshops.png)

![Soukie Modern footer](/media/soukie-modern/soukie-footer.png)

To develop the website, I settled on using Next.js Commerce, an amazing solution that offers a fantastic starting point for e-commerce sites. Given that Soukie had their products on Shopify, it was just a matter of configuring the `shopify` package to fit the needs of a retailer with hundreds of product offerings and building a gorgeous web interface around that.


Soukie Modern

Desert Walk


After having effectively not touched my site in over two years, I knew I needed to put in the work to design and develop something. Unfortunately, that is much easier said than done. I've gone through at least four (and likely more) revisions of designs before settling on what you're using now.

It's not perfect - far from it. I'm not about to break into a preachy "just ship it" rant, however it was out of my comfort zone to publish this without getting all the bells and whistles figured out. Ironically enough, that longing to figure out what I wanted out of a site, along with going back and forth on what it should look like, served as inspiration. I attempted to make the site extremely flexible, with a modular feed/blocks concept that's a cross between a blog, portfolio site, and social platform. As I attain new interests, I can create new post styles that will incorporate nicely into the site's context, creating what I hope one day will be a collage of me.

![Photo preview on the new site](/media/new-beginnings/website.png)

From a technical perspective, the site is rather uninteresting. It's a React site built on Next.js and styled with Tailwind CSS. For dynamic content, I opted to not go with a CMS and instead just a `/posts` directory of markdown files. I am able to attach metadata to posts using `gray-matter`'s YAML-style header and serve the pages/posts with SSG. If you're curious, the site is set in Monument Grotesk by [Dinamo](https://abcdinamo.com/typefaces/monument-grotesk).

I hope you enjoy looking around the site, and I'm excited to see what 2023 has in store.


Noah Buscher

Senior SWE, Dave

Noah Buscher

Senior SWE, Dave

I’m a web developer and designer based in Palm Springs, currently on the infra team at Dave.

New Beginnings

Have a project idea and want to work with me? I’d love to hear from you.