CastleBrix

An online shop for castle building sets, with QR codes that never need reprinting

CastleBrix is a Czech brand of building sets modelled on real castles, châteaux, and other monuments. We wrote its graphic manual and UI kit, then designed and built the WooCommerce shop from them, in three languages and two currencies. Every box carries two QR codes, one for the building instructions and one for a page about the monument. The addresses stay the same. What sits behind them can change.

The Challenge

A box is printed once, and the set inside is then sold for years. The instructions can change in the meantime, for example when a set starts being made from different bricks, and there is always more to add about the castle. If the QR code on the packaging pointed straight at a file, or at a page that later gets renamed, it would break with the first edit. The shop also has to work in Czech, German, and English and show prices in both koruna and euro. Besides regular customers it should reach monuments, museums, and shops that would buy the sets wholesale. And some models are still in preparation, so the catalogue has to show things that cannot be bought yet.

Our Solution

The graphic manual covers colours, the Proxima Nova typeface, the wave, the divider lines, and the slash that separates the language versions of a name. QR codes on packaging get a page of their own.
In the Figma UI kit every colour is tied to a variable and every text to a text style.Components come with a dark-background variant and a visible keyboard focus state.
The shop runs on WordPress and WooCommerce with a custom theme and no page builder.
Each model has two short addresses that go on the box.castlebrix.eu/101 is the monument page, with the castle's history, photographs, and the model compared with the real building. castlebrix.eu/101n is the building instructions.
The instructions address does not point straight at a PDF.It opens a page with the current version and keeps older ones available, so someone with a set from an earlier production run still finds theirs.
The site is in Czech, German, and English, and prices switch between koruna and euro.
Models that are not on sale yet have their own status in the catalogue and a Watch this model button.The customer leaves an email and the shop writes when the model is in stock.
Monuments, museums, and shops get a wholesale enquiry form.
A missing brick has its own support page, linked from every set of instructions.
The design comes with a page called What you will change yourselves.It says what the client can edit in the admin after launch, what means changing the theme, and what has to be decided before any code is written. The QR addresses belong to the third group: they go on the boxes and cannot be changed afterwards.

The shop

Screenshots from the live castlebrix.eu site, not from the design file.

CastleBrix: Homepage — **Homepage**Right under the intro comes the first batch of models, with price and availability.

CastleBrix: Catalogue — **Catalogue**In stock, out of stock, coming soon. Each status gets a different button.

CastleBrix: Product page — **Product page**Below the model's specifications sit both QR codes, with the same addresses the customer has on the box.

Two QR codes on the box

One leads to the monument page, the other to the instructions. The address on the packaging stays, and what is behind it can be replaced without a reprint.