Bloum

Bloum is a paper flower: folded by hand, without a mold or a machine, out of paper that has already been something else. A cut flower is finished within the week and this one stands. The site says that in one page, in the maker's own voice. It was commissioned by OK Creative Agency, the Haarlem agency behind the project.

A list of reasons

Anybody buying flowers is buying them because something has to be said. Bloum starts from that end. Every flower leaves the atelier inside a card carrying the giver's own words, and for givers who cannot find them the page keeps a long list of reasons to hand somebody a flower. Omdat je altijd eerlijk tegen me bent, because you are always honest with me. Omdat je leuk kijkt als je kauwt, because of the face you make when you chew. Omdat je kat nu echt niet meer terugkomt, because the cat is really not coming back.

The reasons are laid out as the cards themselves, each on its own colour with a small printed flower in the corner, photographs of the real flowers standing among them. The humour in the list does more for the brand than any description of paper could.

A green illustrated field with a large red cut-paper flower on the right, reasons printed on tilted dark green cards drifting through the middle, and a bee landing on a petal — Scrolling the second half of the page. The reasons drift past on their tilted cards, a bee wanders across the field, and the scene carries the reader down to the shops that stock the flowers.

A flower grows as you scroll

Past the photographs the page turns green. Two tall vases stand against the field, drawn in the same flat cut-paper language as the printed cards, and scrolling makes a stem climb out of each one, put out leaves, and open into a flower. While it grows, the reasons pass one by one through the bellies of the vases.

Most of the build went into how the page moves. The scroll is smoothed, so the scene glides instead of jumping. The large flowers lean toward the mouse and swing back when it leaves. A bee and a butterfly cross the field on paths of their own, indifferent to the reader. Nothing on the page stands completely still, and nothing moves fast enough to ask for attention.

The words Zeg het over an illustrated scene of two dark green vases on a green field, one holding a red flower on a black stem, with a reason printed in white inside the nearest vase — The Zeg het scene at two points in the scroll. The stems climb as the reader descends, and the reasons change inside the vases.

The same two illustrated vases further down the scroll, both now holding grown flowers, each vase carrying a different reason in white type — The Zeg het scene at two points in the scroll. The stems climb as the reader descends, and the reasons change inside the vases.

Working from a style book

OK Creative handed me a style book: the flower illustrations, a colour scheme, typography, a voice. The page itself had yet to be designed. The layout, the movement and the animation are mine, and I applied the colours and the type so the sections of the long read can be told apart at a glance. The details were settled with the art director over successive rounds.

I did the work at the agency's office in Haarlem, a former hospital chapel. Feedback came in half sentences, “I’m not sure what the product is”, or “the colours are just a little bit off”, and because we sat in the same room I could usually see what was meant before the words for it had been found.

The vaulted brick ceiling of a former hospital chapel, a stained glass window above office desks and monitors, and an espresso machine stacked with glasses in the foreground

One page, tended by its maker

The site runs on Craft CMS. The reasons, the stockists, the photographs and every line of copy are fields, so the list can grow whenever a new reason presents itself and a new shop can be added the day it starts carrying the flowers. A brand this small should never have to ask a developer before it can change its mind.

The headline Schenk liefde over two photographs of Bloum greeting cards, one card open on a yellow ground showing a handwritten message beside a printed flower, and a hand fanning out cards in several colours against green — The shop section. The card opens to the giver's words on the left page and the flower on the right.

The page signs off at full width: Bloum, Pour Toujours.