Sculptor Foundation corporate website development
Sculptor Foundation unites more than 50 best masters of sculptor from Moscow and St. Petersburg, known painters, architects, designers and artists of decorative art.
A classic-style yet modern website created for Sculptor. The main feature of the site is an elegant typography and layout. Elements are arranged with some asymmetry on pages, like in the best vintage books, dedicated to art and typography.
The style for the future website had been indicated immediately, and client fell in love with it from the first sight. First version of the main screen was the best, and with some modification was kept until the project finish.
The hardest part was Apollo head. It had to be a 3D-model, rotating on the page and following the mouse. This concept was included in the offer.
Much time was spent for this model.
We failed to make the model as good as the photograph. Client’s expectations, as he is the master of sculpture, were too high to achieve. Still, the animation of 400 frames was created and programmed for the site, but was not released.
For example, the introduction text on the main page is justified to right edge. With the head, it creates an original text composition.
Head of Apollo Belvedere — the symbol of Sculptor Foundation — turned into a 3D-model and follows the cursor.
Typeface named Kis is used on the site. It is one of the best example of Dutch old typeface. Kis was used for books of 16—18 centuries, and for the Bible in particular.
The most notable work done by Sculptor is sculptures reconstruction of Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. A special page of the website is dedicated for this work.
A reverse composition is used on the page. First block of text justified to right, then second block of text goes center, and the third one aligned to left. Every of these blocks are separated by photographs.
The concepts themselves used to born immediately in designer’s head, but the details ate away too much time. Many versions of each page were reviewed before it was accepted.
As the result the text is enhanced much for reading. Human eye developed a „blind spot“ for long texts, and the reverse composition allows to catch focus for reading.
Different composition tricks are used on different pages of the site.
The work began not from the main page as it usually begins, but from the page about Yuri Orekhov. On the first draft you can see an early concept, that is far from the result.
The second draft was much closer. And the third version was accepted after many remarks.
One more typography trick, pretty simple but nice.
An original menu. Every chapter has its own length, so the entire composition forms an amphora or a baluster.
News page. Blocks aligned to the right, but to compensate the white space on the left, a full-size Apollo statue is used on the page.
The website is well optimised for mobile devices.
Such layout is very hard to optimise for different screens. Main page was optimised up to 13-inch landscape screen.
Video lessons recorded for the client.
