This website required a thoughtful dialogue with the craftsman to determine why people purchase handcrafted furniture. It finally dawned on us: people like the story and the process as much as the piece itself.
Armed with this goal, we set out to highlight these facets while displaying the work in the most complementary way. We knew from the start that the portfolio needed to depict the works as sculptural objects. For this, we subtly retouched the pieces to portray them in a realistic light. Further, we showed the pieces from multiple perspectives to draw attention the detail and craftsmanship.
To augment the work itself, we developed content to provide context for the pieces. We were concerned with highlighting the why? and the how? of custom woodworking. For the first, we created sections dedicated to the artist and his philosophy. For the second, we created a “smell the wood shavings” walkthrough of how a piece comes to be. Together, they give patrons the vocabulary and sensibilities to appreciate handcrafted wood furniture.
fig 1 – Main page.
fig 2 – Detail page. Each image was shown in multiple angles, which are selectable by the thumbail flipper. In lieu of a traditional submenu on the left-hand navigation, we decided to reuse the thumnail metaphor.
fig 3 – Process section. In order to build the emotion for artisan furniture, we walked visitors through the life of these pieces. This included both text descriptions and professionally-edited video.
fig 4 – About the craftsman. This traced his life back to childhood, hopefully creating an emotional relationship with the visitor.
fig 5 – Another detail page.