Fusion Artscape

ArtSaas Technologies, 2024

Fusion Artscape

is a prototype template designed for websites focused on art galleries and individual artists showcasing their work. This project was developed for ArtSaas Technologies during my internship with the company.

All design decisions were thoroughly discussed and optimized to meet company requirements and the technical capabilities of their website builder.

Objective

The primary goal of the project was to create a template prototype that could be integrated into the company’s internal site builder, adding variety to the available template options and offering clients greater choice when designing their own sites.

Milestones

1 Defining Visual Style and Structure

The first step was to establish visual and structural requirements for the template. I reviewed the tools and structure of ArtSaas's proprietary builder to understand how templates could be created and customized.

Visually, the template aimed for a clean, accessible look to facilitate intuitive navigation within the site.

2 Defining User Personas

After discussing the client base for gallery and artist websites, we created two user personas to represent our target audience:

1. Older Art Enthusiasts and Collectors: Individuals interested in art as a serious pursuit, often collectors or regular gallery visitors.

2. Younger Art Explorers and Artists: Younger individuals engaging with art as a hobby or early-career artists.

Both personas shared a common interest in exploring artwork and learning about artists online, but each had distinct preferences regarding website appearance, functionality, and user experience.

3 Sitemap

I mapped out essential pages and structured them to align with the needs of an art gallery website. This helped clarify which pages were necessary and guided the design process for the prototype.

Design stage

4 Market research

This phase was split into two parts:

Internal and External (trends) product researches

1. Internal Product Research: I analyzed existing ArtSaas gallery and artist websites to identify essential features and functionality, as well as less-used elements (like personal accounts). This analysis helped solidify the necessary structure for the new template.

2. External Trend and Competitor research: I explored visual trends and design ideas from platforms like Behance and Dribbble, where designers showcase innovative layouts and concepts.

Additionally, I reviewed popular online builders like Squarespace, Format, Portfoliobox, and Fabrik, which offer a range of pre-built templates. This research provided design references for creating a modern and engaging art-focused template.

5 Lo-Fi prototype

Based on the research, I created low-fidelity (Lo-Fi) prototypes of the pages to explore layout options and overall design. I opted for a left-side vertical navigation bar to enhance user navigation.

Here some examples of low-fidelity prototypes of Fusion Artscape project

Although this layout reduces content space slightly, it offers a fresh choice in template layout, enhancing the builder’s template variety.

6 Final Design

After iterating on the Lo-Fi designs, I finalized the template’s appearance. To enhance the art theme, I incorporated stock images from free resources, as well as theme-appropriate text generated with ChatGPT.

The template design for Fusion Artscape included a total of 18 pages, featuring category pages with organized lists for news, galleries, exhibitions, and artworks for sale, as well as dedicated individual pages for each item. Additionally, essential technical pages were developed to support user experience, including a shopping cart, search functionality, login page, and a custom 404 error page.

Main Page

The final color scheme centered around black, which, while less common on commercial sites, emphasizes the art-focused nature of the template.

News

The design is characterized by soft-rounded shapes, a slight visual boldness in elements, and a clean structure. Artworks and banners feature larger images for a striking effect, which are responsive and adapt seamlessly to various screen sizes, ensuring optimization for both large monitors and mobile devices.

Exhibitions

News page

Exhibition page

Artist's page

Artists list page

Search page

Offers list page

About us page

Offer page

Cart page

Contact page

Outcome

In this presentation, I showcased the primary steps I took in developing a prototype template for art galleries. The design process was iterative, taking into account the feasibility of implementing visual solutions in the company’s builder, aligning with the company's expectations and requirements for templates, and focusing on the end user’s needs and perception of the design. I believe the Fusion Artscape template adds a fresh and unique option to the company's template library, enhancing the range of creative solutions available to both new and existing clients as they develop visually distinctive websites for art galleries.