William Geddes: Website

Challenges With a newly-repositioned brand message, photographer William Geddes needed a portfolio website. As the brand’s number one touchpoint, the website needed to display his images clearly while being easy to navigate. Additionally, it would have a dynamic backend with the ability to upload new content regularly. Strategy Drawing upon the brand messaging established by MSLK, we chose to make the two categories, Life and Style, the basis for the navigation and organization of the site. Based strongly upon our pre-established methods for crafting portfolio sites, we tailored the website to the needs of three different types of art browsers: those that love thumbnails, those that click on big imagery, and those that advance linearly via the arrows. We also recommended a blog as the ideal platform to allow William to tell the bigger stories behind his work, while taking advantage of a blog as the ultimate search engine optimization tool to drive traffic back to the website. Design We came up with a clean, bold, and elegant site that utilizes a plus sign as the main navigational element, emphasizing both the differences and the overlap between the two portfolio sections. In order to differentiate between sections, the plus sign is deconstructed into large background stripes, whose color and direction signal either Life or Style. The blog, too, picks up on the same elements. Success The comprehensive brand repositioning reinvigorated buzz around the photographer. Website statistics revealed a 54% increase in site traffic compared to the previous year, along with higher average page visits. This increase was the result of MSLK’s 360° marketing efforts, driving people online to see the new work. As to the success of the website communication overall, perhaps William said it best himself, “I was looking for a way to bridge the gap in my two main sources of work: people and portraits with still life. MSLK’s design solutions, materials, and marketing support allowed me to effectively target to these two very different audiences with one clear message”