As part of our ongoing relationship with design firm Firestik Studio, we’re happy to announce the launch of another joint project with them — the Guest Curator website.
GuestCurator Traveling Exhibitions was founded in 2001 and operates as an independent representative and coordinator for traveling exhibits originated by museums, organizations and individuals, and they’ve worked with Firestik on their offline branding and design needs.
When it came time for a new website, Firestik developed the plan and the site’s look and feel, and called me in to make it happen. Given the visually rich nature of the exhibitions Guest Curator represents, the site had lots of slideshows and pop-up images that had to be handled correctly, and each exhibition also had different blocks of text content — including a main description, dates of current shows and a box of practical details about the exhibit.
This is where working with someone else’s design can really challenge you as a developer. Since I know what’s easier to build, I’ll naturally tend towards those solutions when I’m working on a design. But trying to remain faithful to a design that works for users but it is more difficult to implement forces you to come up with new ways to solve problems.
So the front page slideshow that includes text descriptions of 3 exhibitions at once is definitely a one-off solution, as are the custom fields that allow Guest Curator to keep the different types of information about each show separate for the front-end (as well as in the admin panel).
Even the buttons and colors on the lightbox-style overlay for the larger images in a gallery are custom — and I’m glad I could implement Firestik’s vision for the site.
When it was all done, I trained Cynthia from Guest Curator in how to keep the site up to date (it might not look it, but it’s running WordPress underneath all the custom design and functionality), and they’re very happy with the way it came out. As am I.
By David Moore on June 7, 2013.
Exported from Medium on October 17, 2020.