What was our role?
Sarah felt it was time to upgrade her dated site and develop a new branding style to complement her latest work.
Showing and telling
Sarah wanted us to create a virtual slideshow but to achieve its promotional purpose this had to feature more than just a series of scrolling images. Each image would need to incorporate social media sharing options but in a subtle way.
“The team at Vu Online in Totnes did a fantastic job designing and building me a sparkly new website. I think it is a whole lot simpler, cleaner and easier to navigate.”
– Sarah Gillespie
Sarah is as thoughtful with her words as she is with her approach to drawing and painting and many year’s ago she set up a blog on Blogspot to share her many musings on art, life and nature.
Sarah required us to incorporate this blog into her new website along with her other essays and reviews.
A visual core
Visual imagery is always important in website design but in this project it was the core around which everything else would need to be built.
We wanted to preserve, as much as possible, the experience of contemplating Sarah’s work which meant attending to factors such as the size and orientation of the images and the transition speed.
We also had to think very carefully about how the other elements of the site would be integrated to be functional without cluttering up the space.
A study in simplicity
Sometimes a website works best when it stands in the background and that is exactly what we have achieved here.
We could never reproduce on screen exactly what Sarah can create with charcoal but we can open up the screen space and dedicate every pixel to coming as close as possible.
Apart from a clean and simple menu across the top, the visitor gets an undistracted preview of Sarah’s work.
There are no bright coloured icons to detract from the artwork and there is even a button to clear everything away apart from the picture itself.
The digital canvas
In a world where the digital and technological can sometimes be seen as taking over the physical and natural, Sarah’s new website shows how the two can complement each other.
We are confident that Sarah’s new digital canvas will help to open the eyes and minds of many.
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