LAVERAN PARIS

LAVERAN DIAMANTS PARIS is a contemporary jewellery house specialising in lab-grown diamonds. All its jewellery is designed around genuine diamonds created in laboratories using controlled technological processes, offering an ethical alternative to mined diamonds.

Laveran Paris approached me as part of its positioning at Galeries Lafayette, to develop a new art direction and rethink the key pages of its e-commerce website across desktop and mobile.

ANALYSIS

After analysing the brand, I quickly identified that one of the key challenges was the perception of the product itself. In the collective imagination, natural diamonds represent eternity — and you don’t replace eternity with technology.

My objective was to shift the narrative: to move beyond the perception that lab-grown diamonds are not real diamonds, and to build the customer experience from there.

MY ROLE

After analysing the brand, I quickly identified that one of the key challenges was the perception of the product itself. In the collective imagination, natural diamonds represent eternity — and you don’t replace eternity with technology.

My objective was to shift the narrative: to move beyond the perception that lab-grown diamonds are not real diamonds, and to build the customer experience from there.

Before even considering the user experience, I decided to start by defining a new art direction around this idea. I wanted to evoke and establish a sense of the diamond as something natural, while also expressing the role of human craftsmanship. I also suggested using the term “cultivated diamonds” rather than “lab-grown diamonds”, subject to checking its relevance from an SEO perspective.

I moved towards a slightly surreal mineral world, evoking a diamond shaped by human hands, like a sculpture revealed from stone by the skilled hand of a sculptor. I developed a visual language of geometric blocks of flesh-toned stone, fractured surfaces, powder and fragments — as though left behind by the extraction of the diamond or the making of the jewellery.

I chose to retain the brand’s luminous, sun-filled quality, while introducing more delicate worn-jewellery imagery and softening the typography, colour palette and compositions.

A second direction seemed particularly interesting to me: creating desire around coloured diamonds. Their natural formation is the result of an exceptionally rare phenomenon in nature.

Today, Maison Laveran is able to recreate, through precise expertise, the conditions that give rise to pink, yellow, blue and green diamonds.

Once this new visual territory had been defined, I redesigned the site’s key interfaces across desktop and mobile: home → category pages → product listings → product pages → brand content → reassurance → related products

I realised that highlighting the ethical and environmental benefits of the diamonds was not enough in this case.

I designed the user experience and worked on the information architecture, content hierarchy, user journeys and interface so that the site would progressively guide users through the brand and product, challenging preconceptions about lab-grown diamonds while highlighting the exceptional nature of coloured diamonds.

The aim was therefore not simply to modernise the interface. The experience needed to simultaneously: make navigation easier → showcase the jewellery → build trust → communicate the brand positioning → shift perceptions of lab-grown diamonds.

I also created or selected the key visual content needed to support this new experience: collection imagery, jewellery worn and unworn, editorial visuals and brand imagery.

OUTCOME

A new art direction and a redesign of the key e-commerce pages, conceived as a single coherent system: analysis → visual positioning → art direction → content → UX/UI → brand experience

This project particularly reflects the way I approach digital design: I don’t separate the user experience from brand perception.

A user journey can be perfectly functional while still failing to address the main barrier to purchase.

Here, the challenge was therefore as much about facilitating discovery and purchase as it was about gradually establishing a different perception of lab-grown diamonds — one that feels more emotional, more desirable and more closely aligned with the codes of fine jewellery.