Translating Vision into a Seamless Online Experience
When Ed Sear an architectural, theatre, and television set designer based in London approached me, he already had a clear and refined visual identity. His branding, colour palette, and typography were beautifully considered, reflecting the high quality of his 3D renders and creative work.
My role was to bring his vision to life online in a way that felt intuitive, elegant, and technically robust particularly in how his portfolio and project galleries were displayed.
A Collaborative Design & Build Process
Ed came to the project with a precise aesthetic and a strong idea of how he wanted users to engage with his work. While this clarity was a huge asset, it also meant that many standard WordPress gallery plugins fell short of delivering the interactive functionality he had in mind.
This wasn’t just a build, it was a collaboration. We worked closely together to explore the reasoning behind his preferred layouts and transitions, and I suggested alternative web- and SEO-friendly approaches where appropriate. The result was a tailored solution that met both creative and functional needs.
Technical & Creative Challenges
Some of the core challenges included:
Custom Gallery Functionality: Ed’s design called for refined interactions, hover states, and transitions that required custom CSS and JavaScript beyond the scope of available plugins.
Flexible Categorisation: As a multi-disciplinary designer, Ed needed to showcase a variety of work. We developed a menu active state made it clear what section of his work users were viewing, by highliting the corresponding item on the menu as they scroled through the sections on his single page site.
Mobile Responsiveness: With such a visually driven site, making sure the design translated well across breakpoints required careful styling and thorough testing.
Image Performance: Because Ed’s work is highly visual and high-resolution, we optimised all images for performance and lazy-loaded them to preserve loading speed without compromising quality.
Delivering a Beautiful and Functional Result
By the end of the project, we had launched a site that:
Brings Ed’s work to life through custom galleries and rich interactions
Organises his diverse projects in a way that’s easy to browse and SEO friendly
Works smoothly across devices, keeping the visual impact intact on both mobile and desktop
Supports his professional goals, whether he’s pitching for TV work, theatre design, or architectural collaborations
Ed was really pleased with the result, not just visually, but in terms of how the site felt intuitive and aligned with the professional image he wanted to present.
