Memory That Lasts · Header exploration
Every option below renders with the real logo asset and the real navigation labels pulled from the live store, at a true 390px and a true 1440px. Nothing here touches the live store or any theme. One option is marked as the recommendation.
Measured on the live storefront at 390×844 and 1440×900. These are defects rather than matters of taste, so they are worth fixing whichever direction wins.
At 390 the logo image spans x 88–300 but the account control paints over
x 260–300. Hit testing at y 69 returns the account element at
x 260, 271, 280, 290 and 299. It covers the last 40px of the wordmark and steals that tap
area from the logo link. This is the most visible problem on the page.
The wordmark renders 212×28. That puts cap height at 8.0px and the thinnest serif
stroke at 0.27px, well under one device pixel, so the hairlines wash out to pale grey.
Gold #AF832F on cream #FAF6F0 is only 3.22:1. Desktop is better
but not good: cap height 11.3px.
The lockup is 8.35:1. A comfortable 12px cap height needs a 38px tall image, which at that ratio is 317px wide, or 81% of a 390 viewport, with no room left for the menu, search and cart. Either the emblem carries mobile on its own, or the wordmark stays unreadable.
The currency button sits at x 36, the highest value position on the page, set in
10px Playfair. Across five premium peers, zero put currency at top-left and zero
show it in the mobile bar at all. Only Caitlyn Minimalist and Missoma surface it on desktop, both
far right.
The announcement bar currently reads “Now shipping to Canada”. That contradicts the US-only brief, and it means the currency selector should be relocated, not deleted. Worth confirming which is true before anything ships.
Every control is 44×44 or 46×46, so the 44px minimum is met. But they sit flush with
no gaps: menu 0–46, search 44–88 which overlaps by 2px, then
300–344 and 344–388. Cart ends 2px from the screen edge.
Adjacent flush targets invite mis-taps.
The announcement bar (46px) and the header (47px) both stick on scroll, holding 93px on mobile and 96px on desktop. That is 11% of an iPhone 14 screen, always. Four of five peers let the announcement bar scroll away; peer median sticky chrome is 60px. Caitlyn hides the header on scroll down and reveals it on scroll up.
The lockup gold is #AF832F; the announcement text gold is #B8960C.
Separately, the favicon is a navy spiral heart with no diamond, which does not match the
gold heart-with-diamond in the header lockup. Two different marks are representing the brand.
Desktop shows five items then collapses the rest. Memorial and Gifts for Her, both real buying intents, are buried behind a generic label. Peers surface seven to nine items at 1440, and there is room here.
Cumulative layout shift measures 0.037, comfortably under the 0.1 threshold, across four
small shifts between 282ms and 549ms. Fonts report loaded. Nav contrast is
12.97:1 and the gold announcement text on charcoal is 4.93:1, which passes AA with a
thin margin.
Each is shown at a true 390px and a true 1440px, using the real lockup and the real nav labels. On a phone the desktop frame scales to fit, so proportions stay honest.
Currency moved out of the header entirely. Nav grows from 5 visible items to 7.
Personalized · Engraved
Personalized · Engraved
Personalized · Engraved
Personalized · Engraved
Emblem is cropped from the existing wordmark PNG, not redrawn. Full lockup still runs on desktop.
Personalized · Engraved
Personalized · Engraved
No announcement bar. Shipping promise moves into the hero instead.
Personalized · Engraved
Personalized · Engraved
Mobile carries a dedicated 44px search row under the logo bar.
Personalized · Engraved
Personalized · Engraved
Currency demoted to a 11px text link at the far right, out of the prime left slot.
Personalized · Engraved
Personalized · Engraved
The recommendation
Take the peer-standard desktop, which is a left lockup with inline nav and the icon cluster hard right, and pair it with an emblem-only mobile bar. The desktop half is not a judgement call: five of five premium peers, Caitlyn Minimalist included, land on exactly that arrangement, so there is no upside in being different there.
The mobile half is where the real decision sits, and the geometry settles it. At 8.35:1 the horizontal lockup can never be both readable and small enough to share a 390px bar. Right now it renders at an 8px cap height with sub-pixel serifs, so shoppers are already not reading the name; they are seeing a smudge with an account icon sitting on top of it. Swapping to the heart mark at 30px gives a crisp, ownable symbol, frees roughly 180px of bar, and lets search sit second from the left where Caitlyn puts it, which matters because this catalogue is browsed by name, pet and birth month.
It fixes four defects at once: the overlap disappears, legibility is solved rather than nudged, currency leaves the prime left slot, and the controls get real breathing room. The trade is name recall on mobile, which is the honest cost for a pre-launch brand. It is smaller than it sounds, because the tab title, the hero and the footer all still carry the full name, and an 8px smudge was never delivering recall anyway.
Two things to settle before anything gets built: confirm whether Canada shipping is staying, since that decides whether currency is relocated or removed, and pick one heart, because the navy spiral favicon and the gold heart-with-diamond lockup are currently two different marks.
Standalone preview page. It is not connected to the live store, not installed on any Shopify theme,
and nothing here has been published. Logo artwork is the existing
mtl-wordmark-horizontal.png; the emblem is cropped from that same file rather than redrawn.
Header renderings are faithful reconstructions built to the measurements taken from the live storefront,
not screenshots.