The 2022 Dominique Ansel Cronut Calendar

Written by:

Zane Huggins

Intro

The Cronut is a croissant donut famously created by Dominique Ansel that is served at Dominique Ansel Bakery in Soho NYC. The flavor changes each month and has never repeated since its original creation in 2013. To celebrate Dominique Ansel’s ingenuity, innovation, and creativity we attempt to bring this delicious pastry to life by featuring its ingredients with interactive hover-states and scroll effects. The results are the Interactive 2022 Dominique Ansel Cronut Calendar.

Process

The whole project started with Weston finding an interesting hover-state style he wanted to test on our own project. The hover-state consisted of one large item that, when the mouse hovers over it, reveals more items that were hidden behind it. We explored a few iterations and brainstormed a list of great products that we wanted to showcase in the design. As huge fans of Dominique Ansel and his legendary Cronut, we decided this would be the perfect topic for the project!

Design

The design process included compiling all of our own photos of the Cronut flavors we had tried ourselves in the year of 2022 (about 7). We borrowed photos of the remaining flavors from Dominique Ansel’s Instagram account. We then hunted down stock photos using a combination of Unsplash, Pexels, and Adobe Stock. 

Each of the images were edited using Photoshop to remove backgrounds and edit their perspectives so all of the elements would be relatively uniform. They were then exported as web-optimized PNGs. 

Using Adobe XD we mocked-up and prototyped the ingredients of each month’s cronut and added the hover-state functionality. We also added the date, name of the flavor, and a quick descriptor, all using a horizontal scroll effect designed to make the user experience resemble a linear timeline.

Development

The development consisted of replicating the prototypes using various JavaScript effects and hover-states. We also decided to push the concept a little further by adding an effect that pushed the ingredients around based on the user’s cursor position. This gave the calendar an additional level of interactivity designed to engage users.

Final Product

We love challenging ourselves to try new things and expand our capabilities. This was a great experience for our team and while we are thrilled with the project’s current state, the final product has yet to be seen. We are likely to continually improve upon this concept in the future, adding new features and functionality!