Responses by Brandon Levesque, art director and designer, CUSP; and Paul Soulhiard, creative developer.

Background: The purpose of this new site for artist Matthew Fisher was to coincide with a rebrand and his first brick-and-mortar store in New York City. We worked with the client to make a more all encompassing experience that was easy to browse, shoppable and editorial to dive into the process. With the introduction of the physical store in New York, we wanted to bring a more in depth experience to the user; that way, they could shop on the website but also get in-depth product detail before making an in-store appointment.

With the rebuild, the target audience shifted as well. The previous site had been more focused on interior designers, so we took a more lookbook approach. For the new site, though, the audience was more well rounded—from designers, architects and people buying for their home. So, we wanted to build something that appealed to all those pillars.

Design core: The site’s core feature is to browse and shop. However, as Matthew has such a story-driven process, we worked hard to incorporate that into the design language. The design style is very editorial and type forward with leanings into historical context. We wanted the site to complement Matthew’s hand-crafted work and not overpower it with over-designed elements. Our thoughtful approach enabled the design and typography to blend seamlessly with his art objects. We also wanted to incorporate features that appealed to interior designers and how they browse in a more lookbook fashion—we wanted to bring that across but in a more unique way.

Favorite details: The two details we are most proud of are the lookbook and the stone library. The lookbook was an opportunity to make a less traditional gallery that reflected the new design language. We worked to build a more offset image gallery that felt like a moodboard and less so like just a row of images.

For the stone library, we wanted to create an interactive space to view and browse the stone Matthew uses and to dive deeply into its history and where it’s sourced from. We created an interactive WebGL gallery to lets visitors browse the stone pieces, compare them and learn how Matthew incorporates them into his works.

Challenges: The stone library. We worked on two or three iterations to find the right look visually but also what functionality felt right as well. Once we landed on that, we underwent a lot of work to make it feel as lifelike as possible to accurately represent the stones. However, working within digital limitations required a delicate balance that was tricky to solve.

Navigation structure: The navigation of the site was a total rethink of what we have built for its previous incarnations. We wanted to create a nav structure that was easy to use but, more importantly, that would let users find what they are looking for quicker. So, we created more pre-filtered subpages that enabled people to jump directly to what they are looking for, and we used more generic color filters so people could really dial in their search. We wanted to make more navigation items that spoke to process, story and detail so the holistic design for the brand as whole felt organic.