Overview

Built on the truth that pet parents shop with emotion, not just logic, this experience turned Pets into a place worth pausing, exploring, and connecting. Turning Pets from a stop into a destination—designed for emotion, connection, and joyful discovery.

Concept: Better together

The concept was rooted in connection. By centering the experience around the quiet, emotional moments shared between pets and their parents, the Pets floor pad shifts from a place to shop into a place to feel. Photography leads with warmth and intimacy, setting a tone of joy, trust, and togetherness that carries through the entire space.

Photography POV

Playful. Intimate. Expressive. Immediate. Connected.

Photography was treated as a primary storytelling tool, not decoration. The point of view looks through the eyes of pets, capturing bold, close-up moments that feel playful, intimate, and emotionally immediate. By focusing on everyday interactions rather than posed scenes, the imagery brings warmth and personality into the space while reinforcing a sense of connection between pets and their parents.

Elevating Product Through Mannequins

Mannequins were explored as a way to introduce movement, personality, and scale into the Pets floor pad without competing with product. The goal was not realism, but expression — capturing the energy and joy of pets in a form that could flex across categories and moments.

Early exploration focused on simplified, breed-agnostic forms with minimal detail, allowing product to remain the hero. Poses emphasized motion and friendliness, inspired by everyday behaviors like reaching, tugging, and play. A neutral finish and modular attachment points created a system designed for adaptability, ensuring mannequins could support storytelling while staying easy to merchandise and maintain.

Energy Through Illustration

Illustration was introduced as a way to carry movement, warmth, and joy throughout the floor pad without adding visual noise. Inspired by the natural energy of pets — zoomies, wagging tails, tugging leashes, chasing toys — continuous linework became a subtle but expressive layer that brings the space to life.

The Pets Floorpad, Reimagined

With the creative system defined, the work shifted from individual elements to orchestration. Photography, illustration, mannequins, navigation, and owned brand moments were designed to layer together—each reinforcing the next—to transform the Pets floorpad into a cohesive, joyful destination. A key change was to upgrade our focal photography frames to scale them up in size while using warm wood to elevate their look & feel. What follows is where the thinking comes to life in-store.

Seeing It Come to Life

After concepting and a focused prototyping phase, the work moved into real stores for live testing. This in-store test brought together photography, illustration, mannequins, navigation, and merchandising to form a cohesive, joyful Pets experience at full scale. Seeing the system live in environment validated the thinking behind it and revealed how moments of emotion, clarity, and play can meaningfully shift how guests engage with the category.

Before & After

A side-by-side view highlights how the Pets floor pad evolved through the test. What was previously functional and easy to pass by became warmer, more expressive, and easier to engage with, while maintaining clarity, affordability, and navigational ease.