Responses by Exo Ape.

Background: Otto van den Toorn is an acclaimed beauty and fashion photographer from the Netherlands. Following the success of his award-winning portfolio website launched in 2018, we reimagined his digital presence, transforming it into a dynamic, seamless world to explore.

Design core: The core of the experience was to keep Otto’s photography as the focal point, using visuals to guide visitors through the journey with a minimally distracting UI. We crafted a dynamic UI that provided support and contextual information while encouraging exploration, creating an experience that moves beyond  traditional webpage structures.

Given Otto’s rich, expansive body of work, we designed a space to inspire exploration and discovery, enabling content to move fluidly from broader views to intricate details. This design gives the impression of moving through a world rather than simply browsing a conventional website.

Navigation: A single, dynamic UI element powers the experience, intelligently adapting its appearance based on page content and interactions. It also serves as a display area, offering helpful hints and information to assist visitors while making navigation seamless and enjoyable.

Special navigational features: Within the image gallery, the dynamic UI element transforms into a quick, easy-to-use zoom tool, enabling visitors to closely inspect the finest details of the photography without any distractions. Visitors can also adjust the background color, choosing from multiple contrast settings for an enhanced viewing experience, ensuring the photography remains the focal point.

Technology: On the tech side, we’ve built a robust stack to bring this project to life. Nuxt.js serves as the front-end framework, providing a powerful and flexible structure to create a fast, dynamic website. Storyblok is our go-to CMS for its intuitive and scalable solutions to more than 20 different layouts, which enables us to easily create and customize diverse project pages. To ensure optimal performance, we use source sets and the Storyblok Image Service to optimize and efficiently preload high-resolution images. Dynamic elements like the UI are updated in real time through smart state updates. For deployment, we rely on Vercel, ensuring quick and reliable hosting with automated scalability.