The link that won't fade

Share the Topicals homepage today and there is no image for the feed to show, so this is the first preview it has ever had. We built it the way Topicals builds its own masthead: the full TOPICALS wordmark knocked out in white on the brand’s red, with the Skincare for Flare-Ups line beneath it read straight from the page. Because the card renders on demand, whatever the homepage is leading with reaches every share on its own, with no image to export or swap by hand.

Faded’s page already has a lovely shot of the tube, but it reaches a shared link as a 3,812 by 3,501 square, so the feed crops the cap and base to force it into a wide preview. Our card reads that same photo off the page and sets it into the share frame at the right size, beside the product’s real name and its $38 price, in the Topicals wordmark on white. Point it at any product and it redraws itself, the Faded serum, a Slick Salve, a Like Butter tub, each with its own photo and price, so the preview is always the product that is actually on the page.

Share Topicals’ hyperpigmentation edit and the link arrives with no image at all. Our card gives the collection its first one: its own name set large in the Topicals grotesque, the collection’s description beneath it, on the clean white the site uses for its grids. Open a different edit, acne or body care, and the card rewrites itself to that collection, so every category can be shared as itself instead of as nothing.