Building a Shopify theme with Horizon - Part 1

In this new 10-part series, I’ll be documenting the process of building a client-ready Shopify theme—start to finish—using Horizon.

This isn’t about building another cookie-cutter theme. It’s about creating something scalable, consistent, and tailored to real-world client work.

 

Why Horizon?

 

Horizon introduces a structure built around nested groups and blocks—concepts that feel more like assembling UI components than editing static templates.

Each “group” in Horizon represents a logical layout chunk. Groups can contain blocks, and blocks can contain other blocks. This nesting gives you a deep level of control over layout, spacing, and responsiveness—without hardcoding or repeating styles across files.

More Than a Theme Framework

 

Horizon encourages you to think in systems:

• Color schema's are more refined compared to Dawn
• Typography is shared across blocks
• Layout rules cascade logically
• Reusable blocks make maintenance easier

In that way, it feels more like working in Figma or building with a component library than editing raw Liquid files.

You’re not just building a theme—you’re architecting a design system.

Who This Series Is For

This series is built for freelancers, agencies, and developers who:

• Want a better way to scale Shopify theme work
• Are tired of brittle codebases and duplicated layouts
• Care about structure, maintainability, and handoff

Whether you’re new to Horizon or just want to see how someone else approaches it, this series will walk through the entire process from setup to handoff.