Brief
Sophie Marchant is an artist based in the South Downs who took up oil painting in lockdown, when she could no longer travel to far flung destinations in her job as a travel writer. Her artwork is inspired by a life-long love of nature and travel which she has fused together in bold oil paintings, often on large canvasses.
With interest in her work running high, she asked us to design a clean and simple, yet distinctive, brand and website to feature her paintings and help establish her brand.
Solution
We designed a contemporary classic brand identity which is unadorned but highly recognisable, its condensed sans serif styling sitting comfortably into the sticky header of the website. This branding is also used on printed materials.
The bespoke website was designed to eliminate any digital clutter and just focus the user's eyes on the paintings, which can be viewed by landscape, seascape or impressionistic themes, with a zoom option. We concluded that designing an artist's website was more about what you leave out, than what you squeeze in.
Full screen backgrounds are used on landing pages, with the theme summaries elegantly scrolling up from the base of the screen. Supporting information follows the typographic style with plenty of white space to keep the visual focus on the artworks.
We delivered the full website with all functionality built and managed in an Umbraco content management system. Written and image content is easiy to manage, including pricing and whether artworks are available for purchase or are already sold.
Results
The brand and website has become the 'hub' in Sophie's marketing strategy, supporting Instagram posts and exhibitions to increase her profile an sell her paintings. A recent exhibition at the Bingham Riverhouse (on until March 2022) combines QR codes on painting captions to link interested viewers directly to the website to read. about the individual works. Sophie added "I'm truly grateful to Nucleus for designing and building me such a beautiful artist's website, which is now key to marketinng my work."
www.sophiemarchantart.com