Communication design for a Wordpress platform for senior contemporary visual artists- QC-727

Project type: Innovation
Desired discipline(s): Design, Social Sciences & Humanities, Interactive arts and technology
Company: Artist Online Presence and Archiving (AOPA)/Archivage et presence en ligne pour les artists (APELA)
Project Length: 4 to 6 months
Preferred start date: As soon as possible.
Language requirement: Bilingual
Location(s): QC, Canada; Canada
No. of positions: 1
Desired education level: Undergraduate/BachelorMaster's
Open to applicants registered at an institution outside of Canada: Yes

About the company: 

Artist Online Presence and Archiving (AOPA) provides services for the archiving and online presence of mid to late‐career visual artists working in the Avant‐Garde traditions. We accompany artists in the work of gathering and cataloging their oeuvre. From this data we produce an online retrospective of their life’s work, as well as providing them with tools to promote and sell their work, prepare their succession and ensure their legacy.

AOPA is currently in transition. Owner and director, Donald Goodes (BFA NSCAD, MA in art theory UQAM), worked many years as an art critic and curator before becoming a web developer creating sites for cultural institutions such as the NFB and university research groups. In the past 7 years, he produced a dozen sites for artists, among his other clients. In 2022, he founded AOPA with the goal of working exclusively for artists.

The mission of AOPA is to ensure the pluralist, cultural-heritage of Canada’s 11,000 professional visual artists over the age of 55 is preserved, one client at a time.

Describe the project.: 

The Communication Designer will be responsible for creating responsive (desktop, tablet and mobile) graphic layouts for the approximately twenty-five templates in the Retrospective platform’s base theme. Their attention will be on all elements of visual language and the semiotic roles they play in the page design, with an emphasis on typography and positioning. It is important that the design sits back, while supporting the presentation of the artworks and the telling of the artist’s story. The Retrospective base theme will also offer options in terms of font
groupings, color pallets and layouts (e.g. one, two and three columns).

The project will be iterative starting with the consideration of and research into the basic building blocks of an artist site, such as the proverbial thumbnail page, in order to articulate principles and guidelines for the design work. The candidate will collaborate closely with the artistic director, the UX designer, the programmer and the integrator. Their layouts will be discussed with the team. Here the role of the Communication Designer is to articulate and defend their choices, and be prepared to make revisions. Once finalized, the Communications Designer will provide a guide that will be used as a reference for writing the CSS code in Bootstrap, and to
develop administration options for the platform.

The graphic quality of AOPA’s online publications is of utmost importance to our clients, and thus to our success.

Required expertise/skills: 

Preferred platform for design work:

• Figma, Adobe XD

Expertise & Skills:

• Must be comfortable with creating solutions to complex design problems in the digital sphere;
• Ability to articulate and defend design choices using the principles of design and the vocabulary of the semiotics of visual language in a cross‐disciplinary team;
• Familiarity with the layout elements in the Bootstrap CSS framework, and ability to apply them in graphic layouts;
• Ability to work under an artistic director;
• A passionate interest how functional design (as opposed to expressive design) subtly communicates using the syntax of visual language including typography, information hierarchy, text and image relationships, colour, etc.;
• A critical understanding of web conventions and trends, and the importance of innovating for the content rather than the form;
• Comfortable with creating text-heavy layouts;
• Attention to detail;
• Comfortable working within and accommodating the technical and UX demands of online
  publications;
• Ability to create designs that are responsive, with multiple variations;
• Excellent time management skills and the ability to deliver on a schedule.