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DADO

One Big Wish

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The Edit

The Edit in season

How a luxury magazine stayed in season all year, from one catalogue.

ROLE

Product Designer

SCOPE

Editorial surfaces, scrims

TIMELINE

Since July 2026

CASE

STUDY

jump to a chapter ↓

The short version

The brief

The problem

The catalogue

Decisions

Also decided

Outcome

Reflection

a luxury magazine, kept in season all year

DADO · THE EDIT

a luxury magazine, kept in season all year

DADO · THE EDIT

01 · THE SHORT VERSION

The whole story in three notes.

THE PROBLEM

The Edit had to feel like a luxury magazine and stay fresh all year. The test site had ten seasonal editions, the live site had one, and an automated check said all was fine.

THE PROBLEM

The Edit had to feel like a luxury magazine and stay fresh all year. The test site had ten seasonal editions, the live site had one, and an automated check said all was fine.

WHAT I DECIDED

Run The Edit as one system: Airtable feeds the catalogue, with one menu, one city layout and one item type. Then read every page like a visitor before it ships.

WHAT I DECIDED

Run The Edit as one system: Airtable feeds the catalogue, with one menu, one city layout and one item type. Then read every page like a visitor before it ships.

THE RESULT

Ten seasons live with no broken menu links, eleven city pages, a catalogue that refreshes from Airtable every six hours, and a wishlist that tells the truth.

THE RESULT

Ten seasons live with no broken menu links, eleven city pages, a catalogue that refreshes from Airtable every six hours, and a wishlist that tells the truth.

02 · THE BRIEF

Premium, current and in season. Three things The Edit must be, every week of the year.

The Edit is where DADO shows its taste before it sells anything. I lead it: the luxury layouts, the pages, and keeping every product and gift guide fresh as the year goes on.

Premium layouts

Products, gift guides and stories laid out like a luxury magazine: big photos, quiet type, plenty of space.

Premium layouts

Products, gift guides and stories laid out like a luxury magazine: big photos, quiet type, plenty of space.

Always current

Products and guides change every week. Pages pick up new items and drop old ones on their own.

Always current

Products and guides change every week. Pages pick up new items and drop old ones on their own.

In season, everywhere

A calendar that runs all year and covers occasions members celebrate around the world, not just one country’s holidays.

In season, everywhere

A calendar that runs all year and covers occasions members celebrate around the world, not just one country’s holidays.

THE CALENDAR MENU, LIVE

All seasons

Halloween

Diwali

Thanksgiving

Gift & Give

Hanukkah

Christmas

New Year

Wedding Season

From Halloween, Diwali and Thanksgiving to Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year and wedding season, so members who celebrate different things all find their season.

03 · THE PROBLEM

A magazine that sells has to feel premium and stay current. The founder wrote the brief. I carried it into pages.

The founder’s plan puts six kinds of content on one item type, so a story can end on something you can wish for, and a List should read in ninety seconds. By September, ten seasonal editions sat on the test site. The live site had one, and an automated check that only asks “does the page load?” called it clean.

worldofdado.com

The Edit on desktop and phone: the homepage, the seasonal Edits and the city Editions.

04 · THE CATALOGUE

Airtable holds it, the console runs it, every page reads it.

Products, brands, gift guides and lists live in Airtable, so the editorial team can change them without touching a page. The admin console pulls Airtable in on a schedule and shows what it synced.

01 · AIRTABLE

Source of truth

Products, brands, gift guides and guide items. Editors update rows here, not on pages.

01 · AIRTABLE

Source of truth

Products, brands, gift guides and guide items. Editors update rows here, not on pages.

→

02 · ADMIN CONSOLE

Catalogue

A “Sync now” button, sync history, missing links and card brands. It also syncs by itself every six hours.

02 · ADMIN CONSOLE

Catalogue

A “Sync now” button, sync history, missing links and card brands. It also syncs by itself every six hours.

→

03 · THE EDIT

Pages

Gift guides, stories and product pages read the synced catalogue. Dropped products go inactive; a failed sync keeps the last good content.

03 · THE EDIT

Pages

Gift guides, stories and product pages read the synced catalogue. Dropped products go inactive; a failed sync keeps the last good content.

worldofdado.com

The console’s Catalogue on the test site: products from Airtable, the “Sync now” button, the sync history, missing links and card brands.

gift guides

479

brands

479

brands

678

gift guide items

678

gift guide items

665

products, 494 of them live

665

products, 494 of them live

Test-site counts from Airtable on 24 September 2026.

05 · DECISIONS

Four choices that got the brief onto the live site.

DECISION 01

One menu for everything, with the Calendar as the index.

why

The plan puts The List, DADO Presents, Editions and gifts on one platform and one item type. The Edit sits in the main menu beside Browse and One Big Wish, and every card offers the same actions.

why

The plan puts The List, DADO Presents, Editions and gifts on one platform and one item type. The Edit sits in the main menu beside Browse and One Big Wish, and every card offers the same actions.

what it cost

The homepage reads its own data file, so two files can disagree about what’s current. The September catch-up was one such mismatch, fixed by hand.

what it cost

The homepage reads its own data file, so two files can disagree about what’s current. The September catch-up was one such mismatch, fixed by hand.

Ten seasons, in order

IN SEASON NOW

Halloween

October

Diwali

Early–mid November

Thanksgiving

November

Black Friday

Late November

Cyber Monday

The Monday after

Giving Tuesday

The Tuesday after

Hanukkah

December

Christmas

December

New Year

Late December

Wedding Season

April to September

Before the move, this index showed the wedding edition.

worldofdado.com

The Calendar, live: ten seasons in order, with the featured one on top. Before the move, this page showed the wedding edition.

DECISION 02

One city layout reads a data file, so a new city is just one more entry.

why

The plan describes City Guides as numbered issues. The first six cities shipped with three sections each: The Hotels, The Tables and The Addresses. A colleague later added five more cities as data, with no new pages.

why

what it cost

A city that wants its own layout has to earn a change to the shared one, and none has yet. And one layout bug reaches all eleven pages at once.

what it cost

A city that wants its own layout has to earn a change to the shared one, and none has yet. And one layout bug reaches all eleven pages at once.

ONE LAYOUT · THE CITY TEMPLATE

CHAPTERS

01Where to stay

02Morning rituals

03The table

04The pilgrimage

05Quiet discoveries

06Where to shop

ONE ENTRY · THE CITY LIST

slug"paris"
city"Paris"
heroImageparis.webp
sections6

SAME LAYOUT, NEXT ENTRY

Paris/dado-editions/paris

London/dado-editions/london

Tokyo/dado-editions/tokyo

New York/dado-editions/new-york

Eleven cities, one layout. A new city is one more entry.

worldofdado.com/dado-editions/paris

The Paris Edition, one of eleven cities built from the same layout.

DECISION 03

I moved each season live page by page, because a page that loads can still be broken.

why

An automated check said everything was clean. Actually reading the pages found 25 dead links, 33 images that loaded a web page instead of a photo, and 11 pages giving search engines the wrong address.

why

what it cost

My link checker only compared the start of each address. Now it checks every part, and lists its six known false alarms. The image check opens every file, so it runs slower.

what it cost

My link checker only compared the start of each address. Now it checks every part, and lists its six known false alarms. The image check opens every file, so it runs slower.

AUTOMATED LINK CHECKCHECKING…

/black-fridayOK

/christmasOK

/cyber-mondayOK

/diwaliOK

/giving-tuesdayOK

/halloweenOK

/hanukkahOK

/new-yearOK

/thanksgivingOK

/wedding-seasonOK

READING EVERY PAGE LIKE A VISITOR

The check says everything is fine.

dead links

18 on the Gift & Give hub, 7 more in the mobile menu

broken images

loaded a web page instead of a photo

wrong addresses

pages gave search engines the wrong address

✓ All fixed before it went live.

DECISION 04

Two kinds of list became one, and “delete” now says what really happened.

why

Collections and wishlists had drifted into two separate stores for the same idea, and a filter sent every birthday list to Collections. A delete could say “done” while the list stayed on screen, because the database said yes even when nothing was removed.

why

what it cost

The old tables stay so the change can be undone, and merged lists start private. Every delete makes one extra check.

what it cost

The old tables stay so the change can be undone, and merged lists start private. Every delete makes one extra check.

BEFORE

Collections

leftover, no screen saved here any more

Wishlists

only showed lists without an occasion

Delete

“Collection deleted”, even when nothing was

NOW

One list

each list keeps the type the person chose

Collections folded in

kept private, old data kept for undo

Delete

“The collection was not deleted. It may already be gone.”

06 · ALSO DECIDED

Smaller choices that shaped The Edit.

Paste a link

A pasted link brings its colours and sizes into a wishlist, using the same product page as a wish.

Paste a link

A pasted link brings its colours and sizes into a wishlist, using the same product page as a wish.

No clone options

H&M’s 58 option rows became 46 real choices; Dior’s 17 identical tiles became one size choice.

No clone options

H&M’s 58 option rows became 46 real choices; Dior’s 17 identical tiles became one size choice.

Faster picker

Options load in 10.8 seconds, down from 39.4, and it says what it’s doing after six seconds.

Faster picker

Options load in 10.8 seconds, down from 39.4, and it says what it’s doing after six seconds.

Each chapter, its own photo

25 look-alike pages fixed; covers went from 4.5 MB of JPEG to 1.9 MB of WebP.

Each chapter, its own photo

25 look-alike pages fixed; covers went from 4.5 MB of JPEG to 1.9 MB of WebP.

One-line fix, eleven pages

One line in the city layout gave all eleven city pages the right address for search engines.

One-line fix, eleven pages

One line in the city layout gave all eleven city pages the right address for search engines.

A calendar that checks itself

The Calendar came live with the season, plus 32 automatic checks that flag it if it goes out of date.

A calendar that checks itself

The Calendar came live with the season, plus 32 automatic checks that flag it if it goes out of date.

07 · OUTCOME

Ten seasons live, eleven cities, and a catalogue behind every page.

Live in the private beta. Reading isn’t measured yet, so whether a List really reads in ninety seconds is still untested.

seasonal editions live, up from one

city Editions on one layout

dead links in the seasonal menu after review

product page for both a wish and a wishlist pick

08 · REFLECTION

Check the real page, not the report.

what I found

Every real problem in the September move was invisible to the automated check, and obvious on the page. The type and colour system is the founder’s, the List layout is Somava’s, and a colleague wrote the chapters.

what I found

what I’d do differently

The image check that opens every file should have existed before the first chapter shipped, before thirty-three images broke.

what I’d do differently

The image check that opens every file should have existed before the first chapter shipped, before thirty-three images broke.