MOOSEY ART ONGOING WEBSITE DESIGN AND COLLABORATION - INDUSTRY ENGAGEMENT

In previous units I mentioned the start of my paid work with Moosey Art after years of free volunteering, helping and networking extensively through the business. (See reflective journal 1 2 3) This at the time was focussed around our London exhibition, however I have continued the work since and we have developed a great deal of other areas throughout the business since.


My primary assignment is handling the online aesthetics of our business. I photograph all of the pieces, prepare them to our house style and ensure all areas of the website are as filled with as much informative and fresh content as possible. However myself and Frazer the owner collaborate at every stage through a variety of media. Most essentialy a website called 'Meistertask', an app allowing us to formally discuss options in real time without being together. The app promotes organisation of tasks, setting of objectives and also has a clock in and out system which allows Frazer to actively see when I am working on the website, which area specifically I am working on and also how many hours I have spent over the week. Although we also discuss over facebook, this allows everything to be kept together in one place and worked through systematically. It has been a literally invaluable tool in co-ordinating our efforts (although sometimes getting notifications through on my phone telling me about all the new tasks he is adding at 1am while I am out partying is a bit of an unwelcome intervention haha!) and allowing me to continue working on the website whenever I want, with or without his input.

We have completely overhauled the website in the past 6 months with an entirely new house style and way of presenting our print releases. Initially he had formatted everything so that each artist could only be viewed induvidually, and many of the product images were highly inconsistent and didn't correctly demonstrate the products in their best light. Nothing was ordered and it was really hard to browse through the great selection of art on offer. In the first weeks of the project he gave me a massive pack of screenshots of how the website once looked, with annotations all over for changes he wanted to make. These are the only remnants of  how things used to look but looking back now it is obvious how much the website has been streamlined and professionalised. Although I do have experience with website coding, we are working everything through the website building platform of Squarespace which was perfectly suited for Frazer when he was simply building the old layout. Many of the new styles I integrated required pushing Squarespace to the limits of it's complexity and functionality to get results above and beyond the simple features it offered. Because of this, Frazer relied entirely on me throughout the process, resorting to only updating the occasional picture now and then, and leaving the rest of the website to me.

Key areas of change were moving all of both the prints and originals from induvidual sections by artists into single larger sections for both types of artworks. This allowed people to scroll through the entire variety of pieces we offer for each selection, and potentially happen upon a work they wouldn't have seen otherwise. It also meant that all artworks were given equal opportunity to be seen, instead of lone pieces by single release artists falling by the wayside in place of artists with repeated releases and promotion.

On the right you can see the old way this was arranged, which required lots of scrolling and only showed brief previews of the style of each artist's work. It made browsing through the entire collection very longwinded and a very disconnected experience. To the left you can see the new version where we are immediately thrown straight into the product list, ordered alphabetically by artist, with a clickable filter for each artists name at the top, allowing easy sorting or free browsing as required.
Instead of irregularly formatted images and angle shots, I had now created a uniform drop shadow effect, and given each original a cutout transparent background so the true full shape of each unique work was showcased against the white website colour, such as this larger example to the right.

For prints, we used a different system to format the images, as they were most typically printed on paper unlike the originals, we decided to photograph them being actively held up by an actual person.
With the work obscuring the face, appearing only as a torso holding the piece, we decided this enhanced the human aspects of the business and also gave a great real life indication of scale which is very handy when browsing art online. As personal, human service is one of the things Frazer always tries to emphasise in his interactions with customers and artists, this felt like I nice continuation of that idea.

Since we compiled all of our print and originals by different artists into a single list, the upturn in enexpected sales has been dramatic. As many of our works are also very reasonably priced, we have found many customers coming to buy a particular higher value original or print, then adding a selection of the smaller, cheaper prints into their basket aswell.

Another  key new formatting change was editing the main house style of the website from a 3 column format to 4. This allowed a greater spread of information to be displayed in a way which felt more evenly spaced and less crowded. One of the key references Frazer had sent to me for when creating the website was of a contemporary street art/graffiti influenced gallery in Montreal named 'Station 16', who also used the 4 column format. He also particularly noted liking the way they had previously formatted the footer of their website with a large black bar, instead of the way ours used to be which was very plain and lacked any kind of impact or definition from the rest of the site. It also lacked a lot of the necessary information and details which the footers of other professional websites often displayed.
Although I liked Station16's use of the blacked out area for their footer, I felt like ours could probably be better and more highly stylised to match the punchy graphic and themes of the rest of the website. So I started tinkering with Squarespace's features to see what could be achieved. I think what I achieved actually looked better than that on Station16's.
Designed to fill almost the entire screen, this neatly sectioned off the footer from the rest of the page and also paid adequate focus to the option to subscribe to our mailing list, which is something Frazer has found great success in generating. It looked sleek and professional, but also was able to feature a great deal more important information without looking cluttered or overbusy.

As well as all of this, we also created a New Releases section featuring all of our latest releases in order so that people repeatedly visiting our website can really quickly browse from the most recent selection since their last visit.

I have also been working on collecting and integrating series of insitu mockups to roll out across the website. This skill in using mockups came in handy when creating visual prototypes of my designs for Mind Garden studios, and is also lending that same professional finish to the works sold at Moosey.

This work has all been ongoing throughout second year and is the product of constant collaboration and teamwork between myself and everyone else on the Moosey team. As Frazer is not a creative himself, although his passion is boundless, the delivery of his vision is sometimes lacking as he is sometimes unable to formally express his ideas in the most concise way. Because of this there have been a couple of areas which have required repeated working and reworking, particularly on him recieving external feedback (often which confirms something I suggested as an alternative initially) which has required patience and sometimes completely changing something back to how it started after spending hours making it so. However finally being paid for my participation in this project which I have massively enjoyed working with for around 3 years previously, it feels great to be involved in these essential positive steps forward. Our key aim is to have the entire site at a top professional standard in readiness for submitting to larger international gallery shortlists and taking things to the next stage!

Half of this work has been carried out working from home, particularly the more menial, data-entry aspects of the job, however much of it has also involved directly going into the Moosey studio for photographing, co-ordinating, shipping and many other hands on jobs. I have my own desk (see left) alongside Frazer and also Matthew Whitehead as part of our partnership with Patterns of Play, who integrate arts culture and football for many ongoing collaborations with Norwich Football Club and others both nationally and internationally. Being within this creative space is something I have also massively enjoyed, with everyone working away at different projects but also pausing to talk and share as well as give feedback. I have talked with them at length about my work at the JIC, and actually borrowed the spray varnish I used in the piece from leftover stock we had from making some small fixes to a piece which was damaged in transit. Working with Moosey really makes me feel less like an artist specifically, and more aligned with a general creativity which boosts me beyond my actions as a single artist. With every new release or sale I know that I am benefitting somebody in a position not entirely different to my own, aswell as furthering my own career with the company.
 Being aware of the way art is distributed is equally important as well as just knowing how to produce it, as well as finding ways to carry that distribution out in a way which breaks down the typical walls created around art and promotes accessibility. Personal service, affordable prices, insider information, honest language and thorough customer and artist care are key factors in achieving this. For me, Moosey is an art company for people who want art which speaks to them and excites them personally, without any of the pomp or intimidation of the high art establishment. Pop culture elements are often featured, in part due to Frazer's personal connection with such motifs, but also in part to evoke that nostalgia and recognition from our audience, spurred on by strong links to social media culture which favours the iconic and impactful.
He also introduced me to several online selling groups for this kind of art, which surprised me in their diversity and activity. The fact that such fully formed international art selling institutions could be entirely hosted through a not for profit facebook group was both mind-boggling and incredibly exciting as to some extent this suddenly takes art resale prices out of the hands of the galleries and auctions. And with Frazer and perhaps many other artshop owners using this as a key advertising medium for new releases, perhaps it would not always be limited to just resale.