CASE STUDY

Visual Grid Design

A grid navigational layout and design.

I designed an inviting website for QRZ Denver, and trained their staff to maintain it, helping increase their impact to grow art within the city.

The organization needed a platform to share their story, display different art mediums, and connect users with their creative community events.

Role

UX Strategy
UI Design
Usability Testing
Web Development

Goals

Share the heart of QRZ Denver and tell their story within an accessible design using artistic visuals.

Challenges

Create a custom design from a base theme on Squarespace. Condense visuals and information into an accessible grid, and train the QRZ team to maintain the website.

Target Audience

Young adults who have a passion for art and a love for Denver. High mobile website usage in this demographic.

Ideate

I began the design process by asking these questions: How can I tell a story through a web experience? What are the visual cues that can represent QRZ Denver digitally?

I developed a visual navigational strategy to represent QRZ’s mission to bring hope through art with color tones moving from dark to light.

Wireframes

I created basic wireframes to explore space and color grade in a simple navigation structure.

Visual UI Design & Prototypes

I was given a batch of files from QRZ’s artists and photographers. Based on the dark-to-light wireframe design, I chose six background images for the navigation grid that had similar editing techniques to provide a collective, visual consistency.

I maintained the visual grid design in the gallery to display and categorize art mediums.

I designed a desktop prototype for further development and usability testing.

Findings

Scrolling has become a core interaction design element in modern web design. I found that moving away from this to a grid layout experience resonated with QRZ’s core team and target audience. Pushing the customization of a design, even in a limited content management system, can give a unique usability experience–for both audience and owners.

Results

2.3K

pageviews each year

500

unique visitors each year

16

featured artists at launch

Featured Work