Off hours · Artist studio
Charlotte Moss Huey
An artist’s site that leads with the work at full size
Redesign concept · the first build is in private preview
The short version
Charlotte has 38 pieces, all priced on request. I redesigned her site around her paintings at full size, her collages up close and one message to ask about several pieces. The redesign, D2R, is a clickable concept made within a day of reviewing the first build. It isn’t merged yet, so the running site is still the first build.
The problem
Charlotte Moss Huey paints and makes collages in Virginia. Her Squarespace site had her hand-lettered logo and a lot of charm, but no way to buy anything. I built her a new site in a week, then reviewed it against 12 artist and gallery sites, from Lulie Wallace to Schumacher. The art was still too small, nothing showed the materials up close, and her six series were scattered across the grid, so I redesigned it.
How can a site with no prices feel as considered as a gallery, and still make asking about a piece easy?
Prices still weren’t approved, so nothing could say Buy, and most photos were iPhone shots with no close-ups.
Key design decisions
One painting across the full screen
In the first build, her largest painting covered about 14% of the first screen. The home page now shows one painting at a time across all of it, with her script logo above, so the first thing anyone sees is the work at a size that shows the brushwork.
BeforeThe first build
AfterD2R
Every work in one grid
The Work page sets all 38 works in one even grid, narrowed by kind, series or size, so the four poppies or the three pitchers can be seen together, and a filtered view can be shared as a link.
The decision: your list
The biggest call was how a buyer asks when nothing has a price. A cart makes no sense without prices, and one email per piece is slow for someone choosing three small works. In D2R every piece can go on a list, with a plus on every card and an Add to your list button on every piece page, and the buyer asks about the whole list in one message. I also took AR off the shop pages. It stays one tap away under Ways to buy in the Work menu.
Look closer
A lens over three collages with named details such as the brooch, the frayed tweed and the foil-edged dogwood, so the fabric and texture show on a screen.
Coming up
A card in the corner of the hero that turns between the Christmas commission deadline and the Sunday Stripe opening, plus a holiday release that the email list sees a day early, so there’s a reason to come back.
How I worked
The review also found her hand-lettered logo missing. I made six home page directions from its findings: a scrapbook with taped photos felt too crafty, and a garden photo of Charlotte lost to leading with a painting. I chose D2, a gallery direction, and refined it into D2R.
What I did
- Audit of her old site, and pricing research on eight comparable artists
- First build in a week, then a review of it against 12 artist and gallery sites
- Six home page directions, refined into D2R
- Information architecture, page design and copy for every page
- Photo processing for 26 new works on paper, and the front-end build
Results
D2R is a clickable concept of the home page, the Work page and a page for each of the 38 pieces, on the same catalog as the first build, made within a day of the review. Neither version is public yet: D2R isn’t merged into the site, every piece is still price on request, and the Ask sheet doesn’t send. What I can measure is the difference between the two builds.
First build and D2R
| Measure | First build | D2R |
|---|---|---|
| Largest painting’s share of the home page’s first screen | About 14% | The full screen |
| Collages you can see up close | None | 3, with named details |
| Messages to ask about three pieces | 3 | 1 |
Measured in the same 1440 × 900 window.
Reflection
I now measure a build against the best sites in its field before calling it done. The first build looked finished until I set it next to Lulie Wallace, Blakely Made and Schumacher and saw how small her paintings were.
I now try what the phone already does before building my own. I spent several rounds on a wall planner before AR through the phone’s own viewer did the job better on the first try.