Design Reveal

Click to see video tour of the Retrospective 1.0 Adobe Figma design file on YouTube.

Weeks to Launch: 10

Welcome to the first AOPA-Retrospective 1.0 Launch newsletter! I’m Mya Fernandes-Giles, AOPA Dedicated-Curator Assistant. I’m looking forward to keeping you up to date on features, bugs and breakthroughs over the next 10 weeks as we work towards launch.

Today I’ll give you a sneak peek into the impressive visual design work that’s gone into our “Signature” theme. I’ll give you some insights into the process. I’ll introduce you to AOPA graphic designer extraordinaire Alex Tench. We’re thrilled to get his perspective on the project and unveil the results of his work!

We hope you enjoy it. Any feedback is more than welcome. Get your friends to sign up here.

AOPA would like to extend special thanks to Karen Trask, a multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal and a current client of AOPA who has graciously allowed us to show you storyboards including images of her artwork.

Introducing AOPA-Retrospective 1.0 “Signature” Theme Graphic design

Mockup of the Artwork Single template on mobile and laptop showing the work of Karen Trask.

Graphic storyboard for the Artwork Single template showing the work of Karen Trask.

AOPA-Retrospective 1.0 is the product of a five-month intensive back-and-forth design process. The work was headed by accomplished Vancouver multi-disciplinary freelance designer Alex Tench, with input from Don Goodes (AOPA Director and UI specialist) and Valeriu Tihai (AOPA senior WordPress programmer).

AOPA’s “Signature” theme is designed to be used “straight out of the box”. It’s elegant, cohesive and strikingly quiet, never speaking over the artwork. It includes layouts for a dozen page templates (more on these in the future), which are currently being programmed (more on that in the future too).

The “Signature” theme is designed to accommodate a large spectrum of art practices. It allows for some personalization in the choice of fonts and colours. That said, we’re committed to fulfilling artists’ needs, adapting to what best represents their oeuvre. So Retrospective is programmed to be fully customizable. Alex is always available to add that personal touch.

Mockup of the Taxonomy Main template on mobile and laptop showing the work of Karen Trask.

Mockup of the Taxonomy Single template on mobile and laptop showing the work of Karen Trask.

Design is important but not king

Print catalogs showing the use of white space consulted in the research phase of the design process

AOPA believes that design is in service of the artist and their art, not the other way around. In most cases, visual design should be subtle, the interface intuitive to navigate, taking a backseat to the content it hosts. It should only deliver a bolder graphic treatment when it helps to showcase the artist’s work.

With this principal in mind, Alex and Don looked to proven conventions for showcasing contemporary art, when they started work on AOPA-Retrospective’s “Signature” theme. They looked to 50+ years of art-world print publications for their inspiration (see artistopa.com/art-catalog-design-vocabulary/). Analyzing the design conventions of piles of contemporary-art catalogs and artist monographs, they distilled out the graphic vocabulary that best prioritized the art and enhanced readers’ comprehension of the work.

The most important design principles they sought to translate from print to screen in the “Signature” theme include :

• Considered use of white space and typography
• Implementation of sophisticated grids when possible
• Restrained Use of Colour
• Predominance of Art Imagery
• Limited Use of Graphic Elements

Mockup of the lower parts of the Artwork Main template on mobile and laptop.

And now a word from our designer

Screen capture of an online work session with Alex and Don.

I asked Alex about his experience working on the “Signature” theme. Here’s what he had to say:

“I was impressed with Don’s dedication and attention to detail with this project. In web design, the research phase is often overlooked but he was insistent on a thorough review of relevant design conventions. The benefits of this are hard to quantify but the insight gained from that work was immense, it provided a strong foundation for what ultimately became a minimal but deeply considered interface.”

Their dedication to research and aesthetic consideration is certainly felt in the final designs.

Alex speaks fondly of the project in anticipation of the upcoming 2025 launch.

“Retrospective 1.0 has a quiet beauty that’s intended to be subtle and adaptable, a hardworking site designed to live on its own or provide a framework for something more. I’m really proud of the work we’ve done.”

If you missed the video tour of Alex’s design files above, check it out here!

Mockup of the Exhibition Single template on mobile and laptop showing the work of Karen Trask.

Until next week…

With the design done, integration of the template pages is underway. In other words Alex’s graphic storyboards seen here are now being turned into fully functional web pages ready to receive any content you can throw at it!

I’ll be looking forward to sharing more on that next week, and introduce you to our programmer, Valeriu Tihai.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see more! Hope to see you there!

Get the word out. Your friends can sign up for this newsletter here.

Mya Fernandes-Giles, AOPA Dedicated-Curator Assistant

Master’s student in Art History at Concordia University, working on a project that relies heavily on alternative archives. Has a great appreciation for record-keeping and cultural preservation, especially amongst little-known artists and communities. Recipient of the Concordia Merit Scholarship, the Guido Molinari Prize in Studio Arts and the Sarah Leaney Award in Ceramics and Fibers.

Artist Online Presence and Archiving (AOPA), provides professional online archiving and web-development services to mid- to late-career contemporary visual artists. AOPA was founded in 2023. It grew out of the freelance work of Don Goodes, who was an art critic and curator in Canada for a decade before moving over to web development in the cultural sector. AOPA delivers its services via a growing team of freelance writers, curators and designers spread across Canada. Over the past 2 years, the core team has been developing a flexible and comprehensive online platform called AOPA-Retrospective, a key tool in delivering AOPA’s services. AOPA-Retrospective is designed to fulfill the needs of contemporary artists, for both archiving and the online presentation of their oeuvre in the spirit of the catalog-raisonné.

For questions or inquiries see our contact page. We would love to hear from you.

The long awaited AOPA–Retrospective platform is the core tool allowing AOPA to efficiently create the best quality retrospective websites and online archives for mid- to late-career visual artists.

Getting here hasn’t been easy. AOPA–Retrospective 1.0 is the culmination of three years of thoughtful design and rigorous programming. There was so much to learn and so many problems to solve. And now we are getting close!

Over the next three months, we will be sending out weekly messages with:

• sneak peeks into the features currently in development
• the bumps we hit in the road
• the people behind the scenes
• special giveaways

We would like you to join us for the buildup to our January launch. Please sign up or get in touch to find out more.