How I ended up working with one of the most relevant artists of the last century
I was excited when the Hibrida communication agency approached me, asking me to create the official website of the artist Luis Gordillo.
Luis Gordillo is probably one of the most relevant Spanish artists of the last century. The importance of his work is better perceived when looking at his whole trajectory: then you understand how brave his art approach was in a time when modern art was just awaking – and how much he contributed to this awakening.
You can know more about Gordillo’s trajectory by reading his entry in the Wikipedia, but you realize about the relevance of this artist when you are directly exposed to the impact that his work had. Even beyond his influence on other artists, he’s been directly present in the Spanish lifestyle. It fills you with pride when you walk into a Spanish subway station and you see a painting as big as the whole wall, created by the artist whose site you just coded. Or when you go visit a city in Spain and find a whole bridge decorated by the same artwork that you just optimized for on-screen display.
It’s big. It’s relevant. And it’s beautiful.
Programming a website to showcase world-renowned art
I was given the honor – and responsibility – of carrying out all the programming tasks for the creation of this artist’s website.
The frame shouldn’t compete with the depicted art. The challenge was to create a website that would make the art itself stand out, while remaining transparent, intuitive and easy-to-use.
The technology that my client chose for the website was an object oriented Flash ActionScript 3.0 approach. Back in the day, this allowed us to achieve effects that would have been really hard to create with other technologies – and that were already foreseeing some of the current web-design trends, such as:
- The website was unobtrusive, allowing the users to see fullscreen images, without distracting elements. User motion would reveal the navigation options in an intuitive way, as modern apps do nowadays to maximize the usable screen area.
- The images would position and adapt themselves to the screen size, following principles of what is now known as responsive design.
- Image elements had a physical presence on the screen. Motion, depth and shading were used in a way that is similar to what material design is now promoting.
The resulting system provided a seamless navigation experience where Gordillo’s art was the main element.
If it pleased a world-renowned artist, it probably was a job well done.