AOPA News

2024

Seeking Contractors for Freelance Content Management

11 June, 2024

AOPA is looking to create a bank of contactors that can take care of the work of assembling and entering text, documents and media content into our artists’ online archives and retrospectives. Truth be told, this is the grunt work that needs to be done. It requires a great attention to detail and the perk is getting to know an artist’s oeuvre in depth. We are looking for students or graduates of art history and art criticism from college, cegep or university.

Here is the job description (en anglais et en français).

AOPA Retrospective Design Peek 01: Artwork Page Top

4 March, 2024

After much exploration, deliberation, trials and adjustments, the AOPA production team has finished working out how we want to design and program the top view of the single artwork page of Retrospective. The content here includes the artwork title, the year, a featured image or video, thumbnail details of the work and a multimedia slideshow.

It may not seem like much, and that’s how we want it. Our objective is to make sure the design and programming gets out of the way and lets users’ focus exclusively on the art.

There is, in fact, a lot going on in the background though. Retrospective is being designed to accommodate a large breadth of artistic practices. In this case, that means presenting images of artworks that have all kinds of aspect ratios: from ultra wide landscape images to the tall and skinny portrait images. The challenge was to find ways that both of these extremes and everything in between fit handsomely on the screen.

To do this, there is some mathematics going on in the background. Valeriu Tihai, AOPA programmer extraordinaire from Montréal’s south shore near Kahnawake, is responsible for the solid HTML and fluid CSS styling. Before a featured image is loaded, he gets its height and width and then calculates the aspect ratio. He then applies an appropriate style so the fit is perfect on all screens.

Val in his work, is adhering to the meticulously crafted graphic layouts developed by AOPA graphic designer Alex Tench, who works remotely from Vancouver. There are more of Alex’s solid design solutions to see on the next part of the page, which presents all the information curators, writers, students, historians and art lovers are looking for when they want to know more about your artworks.

That will be coming soon.

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Client Feedback

I love your attention to detail, be it in the design, the images, editing text, improving on my writing. Your background in writing is an extra asset to your service. You were very professional in the whole process. You take the whole of the client's needs into consideration and that is what makes your service unique. You care, and it shows in the creation of a beautiful product. I felt you went beyond what was needed to make the site spectacular.

Mariela Borello, Montréal artist

I have so appreciated working with Don at AOPA to create my website. His knowledge of navigation on various screen sizes, his understanding of clients' needs, combined with his attention to detail and endless patience makes working with Don such a pleasure. My online presence has enabled my work to be professionally presented to gallerists and clients alike, which in turn has resulted in exhibition invitations and exposure in print, and has got my work out to a much larger audience . I trust Dons judgement, appreciate his professionalism and I have and do highly recommend collaborating with him on any project.

Jennifer Small, Montréal artist

I am very pleased with my site, its appearance and functionality. I was also happy that you showed me how to do some of the work myself so I can do the updating. You aren’t some young hotshot so I felt like I would be less likely to be judged for my ineptitude with all things computer-related. I am particularly pleased that people continue to be able to find it. I know that is something you put a lot of work into.

Sarah Stevenson, Montréal sculptor