Art gallery development

Owl Way is an international art gallery focused on promoting recognized Soviet, Russian and Georgian artists of the 20th century on the global art market. The project unites collections of famous authors, cooperates with artists’ foundations and acts not only as a platform for selling works of art, but also as a tool for popularizing artistic heritage.

The legal owner of the project is the American company Tensero, Inc., and the art direction is supervised by art critic Tamara Vekhova. The gallery cooperates with artist foundations and uses the website as the main digital showcase for an international audience.

Our team was tasked with creating a modern website that would not distract attention from the works of art themselves, but would help potential collectors get to know the artists and submit a request for the purchase of their favorite work.

The project was created entirely from scratch.

It was necessary to develop:

• corporate identity of the project;
• logo;
• UI Kit;
• design of all pages in Figma;
• adaptive layout;
• website on Webflow;
• a content management system;
• application forms;
• integration with Postmark for sending emails.

The main objective of the site was to create a digital platform that unites artists, their biographies, collections of works and a system for contacting potential buyers.

As part of the project, our team completed a full development cycle.

Research and design

Before starting the design, the structure of the future gallery and the logic of visitors’ interaction with the works of art were worked out. Special attention was paid to ensuring that the user’s journey from meeting the artist to submitting the application took a minimum number of actions.

Corporate identity development

We have created a new visual style for the project.:

• logo;
• the company’s color palette;
• UI Kit;
• the component library;
• the system of typography;
• a single visual language for all pages.

The minimalistic style made it possible to make the paintings themselves the main element of the interface, rather than the decorative elements of the site.

Interface design

All pages were designed in Figma.

A total of 9 pages were designed:

• Main;
• About;
• Curator;
• Artists;
• artist’s card;
• Showroom;
• artwork card;
• Blog;
• Contact;
• the news page.

Each page has its own structure corresponding to the user’s interaction scenario.

Catalog of artists

One of the key parts of the project was the catalog of artists.

A personal page was created for each author, containing:

• biography;
• exhibition activities;
• list of works;
• photographs of works of art.

This made it possible to present each artist as an independent creative unit, rather than just a list of paintings. The structure of the catalog and artist cards was provided at the design stage of the website.

Art Gallery

The Showroom, a digital gallery that combines all the works presented on the site, has become a separate section.

Visitors can go to the artwork’s card, view information about the work, and submit a purchase request. The whole logic is built in such a way that the user first gets to know the artist, and then decides to apply.

The application system

The site is not an online store.

We deliberately abandoned the classic shopping cart and online payment.

Instead, an Inquire form has been implemented, allowing a potential collector to send a request directly to the gallery owners.

After filling out the form, the information is automatically sent via the Postmark service, after which further communication with the buyer takes place in an individual format. This approach is fully consistent with the practice of selling works of art in the high price segment.

Webflow CMS

Webflow was chosen as the platform.

This solution allowed:

• quickly launch the project;
• provide the customer with a convenient CMS;
• to abandon the development of your own administrative panel;
• simplify project maintenance;
• provide self-editing of content without the involvement of developers.

Additionally, the built-in CMS Webflow has been configured to manage artists, pages, and publications.

For this project, Webflow turned out to be the most rational choice.

The platform allowed combining modern design, a convenient content management system and high-speed development. An important factor was that the customer already had experience working with Webflow, so the employees were able to manage the site themselves after completing the project without additional training.

At first glance, the site looks very concise, but that was the main difficulty.

When developing projects for the field of art, design should not compete with the works of artists. Any unnecessary visual element begins to distract the visitor’s attention.

Therefore, our task was to create the most restrained interface that would emphasize the paintings, rather than the site itself.

In parallel, it was necessary:

• develop a corporate identity from scratch;
• create a logical gallery structure;
• think through the navigation between artists and their works;
• keep the feeling of a premium project.

It was the search for this balance that took up most of the design work.

• Webflow
• Figma
• Webflow CMS
• Postmark
• HTML5
• CSS3
• JavaScript
• Responsive Design
• UI Kit
• Logo Design

As a result of the project, the customer received a modern online gallery, which became the main digital showcase of the project.

After the launch:

• artists have received personal pages;
• a unified structure of the catalog of works of art has appeared;
• the customer received a convenient CMS Webflow;
• all customer requests began to arrive through a single channel;
• The site has become a presentation platform for an international audience and is used to present collections of contemporary art.