 website portfolio Grapefruit Moon Gallery
Assembled over a period of 20 years by Daniel D. Murphy while touring as a member of the rock group Soul Asylum, the gallery includes the largest known collection of paintings by renowned illustrator Henry Clive, and a legendary pastel by Earl Moran of a young pin-up model soon to be known around the world as "Marilyn Monroe"!
Two of the most important contributions that designers hope for from their clients in the web design process are a clear starting point for the style of the site design, and a good selection of source images relating to the subject matter of the site.
The woman and moon gallery logo was developed from an original painting by Henry Clive, circa 1910-1920, and fonts, navigation elements, and border shapes used in the site evoke the sensibilities of the era. The mouseover state (right) on the main navigation titles uses a Deco underline rather than a standard color change most commonly found on websites.
The Golden Gallery
To resolve this issue, nigelparry.net created a feature in the content management system which enables the client, with just a simple click on a checkbox, to add a piece to a special section of the site known as The Golden Gallery. Pieces checked continue to be easily found in their appropriate site category, eg. Pulp & Paperback, but now additionally appear in The Golden Gallery, section, which showcases the highlights of the collection. As an acknowledgement of the unique pieces in The Golden Gallery, the section's pages display only clickable thumbnails of the artwork, identified only by title and artist name. This section format is generated automatically by the content management system.
 The homepage of the site offers a brief overview of each of the sections of the Grapefruit Moon catalog, with a deco-styled feature box for each site section (see right). Most prominently located on the feature boxes are pieces from the section that are also featured in The Golden Gallery, followed by the four artworks most recently added to the section. Navigation on Grapefruit Moon Gallery is self-evident, with a "What I Click Is What I Get" (WICIWIG) scheme implemented wherever title graphics appear, in addition to ubiquitous text links. For example, someone clicking on Pin-up & Glamour Art at the top of the graphic on the right, would get to the index page of that section of the catalog. If you click on "From The Golden Gallery" you are taken to The Golden Gallery index. Similarly, when you click on the artwork featured from the special section, you go directly to the artwork's catalog page, as in the case of the four thumbnails listed as recently added. Clicking on the "Recently Added" title itself will take to you the global "What's New?" page for the site. Clicking on the "More..." text link under the three pieces will take you to the Pin-up & Glamour Art index page, which lists all the pieces in that section. The navigation makes sense. |
