Background
Matt Austin is a Freelance Photographer and is known as one of the best in the South West of England. Working as a Press, Commercial and Editorial photographer for the last 20 years. He has been producing photographic content for a number of the most notable talented clients within the country.
The Brief
Matt Austin was seeking a new online home for his work — A minimalist portfolio website that engagingly showcased his photography. Concentrating heavily on the imagery and letting the work speak for itself.
Our Approach
Using inspiration from traditional photography, we created a branding that reflected the classic black and white format. In particular, we had in mind the look and feel of 35mm film, an iconic medium we wanted to pay homage to
We started by drawing a wireframe. We wanted to showcase the projects in a grid system with the optimal use of the space available while keeping the proportions of the content intact. Sort of like a mason fitting stones in a wall.
In such an image-centred website, finding the right way to display the text-based project information proved to be a challenge. We came up with a solution that's a noticeable nod to the Polaroid photo, adding the text in some white space right below the picture.
The photo gallery is entirely bespoke. We wanted to display the project photos as large as possible to put emphasis on Matt Austin's superb quality of work. The navigation in the portfolio is built to resemble the perforations on 35mm film. In this way, this crucial part of the website fits perfectly in with the rest of the brand.
We also incorporated project filtering with hashtags within the site menu. This system is beneficial to the viewer of the site to navigate through the projects quickly and seamlessly.
The result
Matt Austin is now equipped with a fast and immersive portfolio website, built on an easy to manage CMS powered by Wordpress.
The new, future-proof site acts as a hub for expanding his portfolio, growing as a photographer and attracting new exciting clients.