Responses by Querida.

Background: This is a portfolio website for Elsa Hanneke, an artist and interdisciplinary director working across live experiences, installations, film and performance visuals, mainly within the music and fashion industries. It functions as a window into her work, with the goal of showcasing her experience and creative approach in a visual, simple and engaging way.

Design core: The design focuses on simplicity and visual impact, letting the work take center stage. A minimal interface, strong imagery and a structured yet flexible layout play with typography and image interactions to complete the experience and make it more distinctive. Subtle details, such as the black-and-white theme option, also give users some control over their viewing experience.

Favorite details: One of the main challenges was combining cinematic, systems-thinking spatial references with futuristic, tech-driven system codes to create a custom visual language for the website that feels nonlinear, intimate and dynamic.

We’re most proud of how the site uses these inputs to establish a strong visual language with very few elements while still expressing a layered identity. Through the restrained use of typography, black-and-white contrast and a clear layout system, the website becomes a systems-thinking space rather than a linear portfolio.

Challenges: Finding the right balance between immersion and usability. Because Hanneke’s work is highly visual, it was important to ensure that the site felt cinematic and expressive while remaining intuitive and accessible across different devices. Decisions around image hierarchy, loading behavior and navigation required careful consideration to avoid compromising performance or clarity.

Navigation: We designed the navigation structure to be as simple and unobtrusive as possible. The idea was to reduce friction and let users move through the work instinctively, without relying on complex menus or multiple layers. By limiting navigation to essential sections and integrating filtering directly into the project view, the experience stays fluid and focused.