Mir­rors and reflections

or How we built a bril­liant design sys­tem for pur­pose­ful artists includ­ing eCom­merce design, data migra­tion, and Expres­sio­nEngine development.

ABP case study cover image showing a creative team working in an office with a red promotional banner
About this company

Estab­lished in 1988, Autograph’s mis­sion is to cham­pi­on the work of artists who use pho­tog­ra­phy and film to high­light ques­tions of race, rep­re­sen­ta­tion, human rights and social justice.

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The (short) story

We start­ed small. A sim­ple email design. A cor­po­rate web­site, an online store, and a unique stock pho­tog­ra­phy plat­form fol­lowed. Over the course of a few years we cre­at­ed bet­ter ways to show­case and explore the work of tal­ent­ed and com­mit­ted artists shoot­ing in the real world.

The Approach

Our client projects and pro­posed chal­lenges grew as we learn more and more about their mis­sion, artists and audiences.

A beau­ti­ful cor­po­rate website.

We built a com­plex mul­ti-site set­up, cen­tral­iz­ing all their dig­i­tal chan­nels into a sin­gle man­age­ment sys­tem. Auto­graph’s small team was empow­ered to cre­ate con­tent freely, with­out need for an agency or any spe­cial­ized tech­ni­cal resources, and pub­lish it on mul­ti­ple places. In just a few clicks, major con­tent releas­es became mini-web­sites, blog arti­cles became land­ing pages, and new exhi­bi­tions became mar­ket­ing campaigns.

Our CMS archi­tec­ture helped them write once and pub­lish any­where, under a beau­ti­ful, acces­si­bil­i­ty-com­pli­ant design.

Flex­i­ble eCommerce.

As of today, in the gold­en age of Head­less CMS imple­men­ta­tions, it’s rea­son­ably easy to build com­plex struc­tures to pow­er up unortho­dox busi­ness needs. When we released this project we had to jump through hoops to fig­ure out a way to sell, in a sim­ple and ordered fash­ion, any­thing relat­ed to Auto­graph includ­ing books, events, exhi­bi­tions, dona­tions, bun­dles, and the actu­al photographs. 

The solu­tion came through a high­ly flex­i­ble imple­men­ta­tion of Expres­sio­nEngine plus cus­tom devel­op­ment of eCom­merce func­tion­al­i­ties and API imple­men­ta­tions to their admin­is­tra­tion appli­ca­tion ecosystem.

Browse, choose, license.

In addi­tion, we devel­oped a cus­tom Image Bank offer­ing com­pa­nies easy reg­is­tra­tion, pho­to brows­ing based on a large num­ber of pos­si­ble fil­ters, list­ings and favorites, licens­ing options, fees and dis­counts, as well as auto­mat­ed renew­al options.

Full-page screenshot of a music and arts website with dark grid layout and performer photos
Mobile phone mockup displaying a dark music and arts website with a performer photo grid
Music website event listing page with black and white performer photos and orange accent colors
Music website article page with text content and vintage black and white documentary photography
Music website with dark background showing a large grid of black and white concert and performance photos
Music website event detail page with a red promotional poster and a vintage couple photograph
Music website screenshot with white background concert photo grid and red accent details
Music website article page with warm-toned header photo and black and white dance performance images
Music website desktop view with white sidebar navigation and black and white performance photo grid
Music website with red banner header and dancer performer images on dark background
Full-page screenshot of a music archive website with white background and black and white performance photo grid
Music website desktop screenshot showing dark editorial layout with performer portrait images
Full-page screenshot of a music festival website with orange and black branding and black and white concert photos
Brand stationery mockup showing white letterhead and business cards on a grey surface
Music website screenshot with dark background and two black and white performer portraits

Key Take­aways

Mak­ing his­to­ry visible

We enjoyed the project because it felt impor­tant and authen­tic. We helped our cus­tomers cre­ate a bet­ter kind of con­tent-first website.

The flex­i­bil­i­ty pro­vid­ed by our cho­sen devel­op­ment struc­ture allowed the Auto­graph team to gen­er­ate rel­e­vant con­tent with­out spend­ing much time or inter­nal resources. 

The end result was a cohe­sive, beau­ti­ful pre­sen­ta­tion that served as the per­fect frame for their out­stand­ing artists and their fea­tured work.

Services

  • Brand­ing and graph­ic design
  • Design sys­tem
  • Web­site design
  • Acces­si­ble web­site development
  • eCom­merce development
  • Replat­form and data migration
  • Cus­tom image bank development
  • Email mar­ket­ing set­up, design and strategy

Tools

  • Expres­sio­nEngine
  • Cus­tom Lar­avel development
  • Cus­tom API inte­gra­tions to ERP, CRM, account­ing and mar­ket­ing platforms
  • Mailchimp