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A site that must not steal the scene. It has to let the works breathe.
Artisintheair moves in the world of contemporary art in Milan: artists, exhibitions, advisory, collections. Its site could not be “one more beautiful site”: it had to be a digital space able to accompany the art without getting in the way. Dense editorial content, works you actually look at, fluid paths that never turn into a soulless catalog. We designed it the way you design a good exhibition: if you notice it too much, something is wrong.
WHO ARTISINTHEAIR IS
Who Artisintheair is.
A company that in the art world does not only sell “pieces”, but builds context, relationship, reading: artists, physical and virtual exhibitions, advisory, collection management, art investment. A place where images and words carry exactly the same weight.
Laying out a couple of photographs and four headlines was never going to be enough: it took a site able to carry a real authorial voice, without smothering it under a UX that is too intrusive or too pleased with itself.
THE CHALLENGE
A fine line: giving the art room without losing the visitor.
The request was clear: an experience that would not feel prefabricated. No template effect, no interface to “learn” before getting to the content. But there was a far from small problem: when you want to leave room for the art, you risk taking away the handholds people navigate by; when you add too many handholds, you ruin the atmosphere. The line was fine, very fine.
On one side, long and strongly narrative content, like Alessandro Bavari’s “Invisible Cities” project, where the story weaves Calvino together with a creative process built on AI: material to be read, and to keep people there, without turning the page into a wall of text. On the other, a complex database of works, with filters and categories that in an art project risk reducing the art to inventory.
WHAT WE DID
Designing the UX the way you design an exhibition.
We approached the work as a digital exhibition space. Not a shop window, not a well-dressed landing page: an environment, the kind where every element has a precise role. The works have to breathe, the texts have to be readable, the paths have to exist without becoming cumbersome. In cases like this, UX has to know when to disappear rather than when to be noticed.
So we built a design system that is consistent but not intrusive — spacing, typography, rhythm, a hierarchy that tells you “where we are” even inside narrative pages — and a content architecture designed for discovery, able to handle artists, projects, physical and virtual exhibitions. Originality here is not a special effect: it is the layout’s ability to disappear at the right moment.
ADAM phase: Design + Measure
Design system
Architecture for discovery
Performance
THE TECHNICAL PART
Two speeds, by choice.
We deliberately built paths at two speeds: whoever comes in to “see the latest exhibitions” has to get there straight away; whoever comes in to read and go deeper has to be able to do it without interruptions. Not a compromise, a UX decision.
And on the visual side, we treated high-definition zoom and immersive views as a matter of credibility, not as one more feature: if the image is art or fine photography, people have to be able to walk into it with their eyes, to move closer, look, step back without getting lost. A natural gesture, not a rigid interface.
THE HEART OF THE PROJECT
Originality as a constraint.
This is the idea we are proudest of. Thanks to a solid information structure and navigation tools built with care, the site guides visitors through exhibitions, artists and services with no maze effect. But it also leaves room for the positive drift that in art is almost compulsory: you come in for one thing, you discover another, and you feel like staying a little longer.
When the structure is done well, originality is not crushed: it becomes walkable. And in digital that is worth a great deal, because holding rigor and surprise together is exactly what separates a living space from an archive.
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THE RESULTS
THE EXPERIENCE, NOT THE PERCENTAGE
A space to be in, not one to scroll past.
Self-image
A place, not a shop window
the site is perceived as a space to be in, not one to scroll past.
Experience
Reading and seeing together
people do not have to choose between “understanding” and “feeling”.
Navigation
Discovery without a maze
categories and navigation that avoid the inventory effect.
Content
A structure that grows
new content added without losing consistency.