Sublime · Shopify theme · 2026
Designing a Shopify theme for healthy-lifestyle brands
Sublime is a Shopify theme for nutrition, fitness and wellness stores. I was one of four designers, second to the lead, and the main point of contact for developers and QA during the build.
Role
Designer
Team
4 designers, with developers and QA
Scope
37 sections, overlays, header, footer, pages
Status
Complete · awaiting Shopify review
01 — The gap
Plenty of Shopify themes, few built for healthy-living brands
Before designing anything, we compared several Shopify themes and found very few made for brands selling nutrition, fitness and wellness products. That became the brief: a theme built for healthy-lifestyle stores.
37
sections, plus overlays, header, footer and page templates
2
signature features: Discovery and the Dock
8
months from research to a finished theme, 3 of them on research and design
02 — Signature features
Discovery and the Dock
We planned the full section list early: 37 sections, plus the overlays, header, footer and page templates. Most are what merchants expect from any theme. Two are new: Discovery and the Dock.
We split the sections between us, and each designer created several iterations. I then ran the meetings where the team chose one final design for each section.
Feature 01
A search-led hero section. Shoppers describe what they want, like “energy for a long run” or “protein after the gym”, and matching products load right inside the section. Image prompts arranged around the search bar and quick-search chips give them somewhere to start, and a fallback collection appears when a search finds nothing.
Before a search
Results in the section
Feature 02
A small floating bar pinned to the bottom of every page. It opens into a panel, and what it shows depends on what’s on screen. Merchants pick which modes to use.
Spotlight
The product in the banner on screen
Sale
A collection’s products on sale, on collection pages
Peek
The products inside a collection section
Info
Key stats for the product card in view
Cart nudge
A mini cart when a shopper with items goes idle
03 — Settings
Making 37 sections behave like one theme
With four designers working on different sections, extra settings crept in and the sections started to drift apart in how they looked.
01
One settings system
I wrote the settings for all 37 sections, so a merchant sees the same options, names and order everywhere.
02
Familiar to merchants
I used Claude to check every setting for consistency and aligned them with Horizon, Shopify’s own theme, so merchants already know how they work.
03
Removing extra settings
I removed the extra settings that had crept in from different designers, and fixed the visual differences between sections that came with them.
04 — Build and QA
Prototyping, handoff and QA
The developers were busy when the designs were ready, so I started prototyping them in Shopify myself.
01
Prototypes in Shopify
I built my designs in Shopify with Claude to test them early. When the developers were ready, they had a working skeleton to build from instead of a blank file.
02
Handoff in person
I sat with the developers, explained how each section was meant to work, and answered questions as they built.
03
Design QA and edge cases
I checked every section and setting in Shopify and reported issues to developers and QA. I also built Claude tools that took a section’s design and settings and listed the edge cases to test, then sat with developers and QA to fix them.
04
Motion and defaults
I specified every animation as an HTML prototype the developers could copy, set the default layout a section gets when a merchant adds it, and helped generate images and video with Magnific.
05 — Selected sections
A few of the 37 sections
Each one shares the same settings system, so they can be mixed on any page and still look like one store.
Product bundle
Image with products
Shoppable image
Before & after
Feature showcase
Showcase gallery
Testimonials
UGC videos
06 — Outcome
Where it stands
The theme is finished and awaiting review for the Shopify Theme Store. Alongside the build, I also worked on its documentation.
What I learned
On this project I was handing out work to two designers more experienced than me. Knowing every section in detail mattered more than seniority. Developers and QA came to me because I could answer quickly.
Next project
Live preview
Coming soon