Our Work
Research & Strategy
We conducted research that included artists, staff, board members, and students involved in every aspect of The Clay Studio’s offerings. The stakeholders we spoke with reinforced that The Clay Studio is deeply rooted in community and inclusion, a welcoming place for people of all skill levels and backgrounds to connect and create art side by side. They also highlighted the nationally and internationally renowned ceramic artists who come to The Clay Studio to create, teach, innovate, collaborate, and display their work. We knew that balancing these two ideas throughout the website’s messaging and design would be vital to the success of the project.
Workshop
The Clay Studio boasts a wealth of creativity among its leadership and staff. We led them through workshop exercises designed to capture how their visual style translated into a web experience and refine key brand messages we’d collected in the interview process. Given the high priority of streamlining course registration and shopping experiences, we also led a deeper discussion of the functionality required to improve the process for users and reduce the burden on staff.
Design & Development
A key consideration of our design was the overlapping roles of people, pieces of art, and programs in The Clay Studio’s work and online presence. We created a circulatory navigation system so that people and objects would be discoverable from other page types.