The Art World and the World Wide Web

Our design for the recently launched Sperone Westwater
website takes its inspiration from the gallery’s sensational eightstory
building and big red box. It is a dynamic website with a
beautiful sense of authority—deceptively robust and crafted
using the principles of responsive design to ensure easy navigation
and pleasing display across a wide range of devices, from
desktop computers to tablets and smartphones. The site looks
simple and clean, and, importantly, it respects and reinforces
the gallery’s well-established and admired print identity, not
only in its strong masthead and footer but also in the body of the
website through the use of custom typography. The website uses
nuanced tonal gradients to create a soft design framework,
eliminating the need for lines and grids and imparting a sense
of naturalness to the organization of the content. The website
also incorporates the use of left/right image/text modules, a
new strategy to help make extended editorial content less static
and more visually appealing. The modules make it easy for
gallery staff to add related images to editorial content anywhere
in the site, with text wrapping pleasingly around the images.
The use of custom typography results in a unified, refined feel
to the website—it’s easy on the eyes.
The first thing you see when you enter the website is a
dramatic full-page black-and-white image of the gallery’s
building, looking splendidly futuristic, as if lifted from Fritz
Lang’s Metropolis. Centered at the top of the page, in Sperone
Westwater’s signature New Aster typeface, are the words “Sperone
Westwater” in red, all caps, superimposed over a full-page
photograph of the gallery building. The six main navigation
tabs (“Artists,” “Exhibitions,” “Catalogues,” “Art Fairs,” “News,”
and “Gallery”) are centered directly under the Sperone Westwater
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