enticing interactive art enthusiasts with a cohesive exhibition preview

Animated landing page preview of the Fuorisalone microsite

Roles

Art Director + UI Designer

Team

Mahla Aghapour, Melika Rezazadeh, Sadra Almasi

Duration

Spring 2023, 5 weeks (Academic Project)

CLIENT OVERVIEW

Fuorisalone is an annual event held during Milan Design Week, showcasing a diverse range of interactive installations, exhibitions, and cultural events. It is a platform for emerging and established designers, artists, and innovators to present their latest creations and ideas in design and creativity.

PROJECT BRIEF

As a pre-event entry to Fuorisalone’s interactive installations, our microsite offers visitors a preview of upcoming exhibitions before Milan Design Week. Over five weeks, we used art direction to craft a distinctive microsite, dedicating the first three weeks to immersive visual discovery and creative exploration, followed by two weeks of refining interactions and prototyping to deliver an engaging user experience.

01

A collage of the initial posters made for this project

INITIAL EXPLORATION

The project began with an in-depth study of designers Chris Ashworth and Ellen Lupton to uncover design principles and properties. Building on this foundation, I explored various art directions, experimenting with color schemes, typography, and layouts to craft an effective visual identity for the microsite. This process balanced creativity and functionality, pushing creative boundaries while maintaining a cohesive design.

02

Final Poster
Escalator Mockup Subway Mockup

FINAL DIRECTION

As a team, we chose this direction because it combined bold visual expressiveness with practicality for digital implementation. The strong typography and layered textures created a striking aesthetic, while the grid-based structure ensured adaptability across screen sizes and clarity in navigation. The consistent use of purple as an accent color established a cohesive visual identity, making it well-suited for an engaging and intuitive microsite experience. This design effectively translated the dynamic essence of Fuorisalone into a format optimized for digital interaction.

03

Landing Page animation Home Page animation Content Page animation

PRINT TO DIGITAL

To transfer the Fuorisalone design from print to digital, I began by identifying the core visual elements from the poster—its bold purple accent, typography, and layered textures. These elements formed the foundation for the microsite’s design.

  1. Color Scheme: I began by analyzing the bold purple accent used in the poster and chose to maintain it as the primary color for the microsite. This ensured visual consistency between the print and digital formats. The vibrant purple was carefully applied to key elements such as buttons, headers, and background highlights to create a cohesive and recognizable visual identity. Additionally, I adjusted the contrast levels to ensure the purple was legible and accessible across various devices and screen resolutions.
  2. Typography: The typography from the poster featured striking and bold fonts that required adjustments to work effectively in a digital space. I selected web-safe fonts that closely matched the original design to maintain consistency. Font sizes were increased slightly for better readability on smaller screens, and I adjusted line spacing (leading) and letter spacing (tracking) to ensure the text flowed naturally in a scrolling format. These changes preserved the poster’s bold aesthetic while making it user-friendly across devices, including mobile and tablet screens.
  3. Textures and Layout: The poster’s layered textures and dynamic composition were adapted into a structured grid-based layout for the microsite. I used the grid to organize content into clear sections, ensuring users could navigate seamlessly through the site. To translate the textures into a functional design, I simplified overlapping elements into clean, digital-friendly visuals that retained the poster’s dynamic energy. The layout was optimized for scrolling, ensuring that each section transitioned smoothly while maintaining the visual impact of the original layered design.

REFLECTION

This project strengthened my expertise in visual design and art direction, emphasizing the importance of consistency and adaptability. By developing a cohesive visual theme and translating it seamlessly into the microsite, I crafted an engaging and user-friendly experience. This process highlighted the value of unifying design elements across media to ensure both visual impact and functional clarity.

CHALLENGES

A key challenge in the project was ensuring the microsite's bold visual theme did not hinder its usability. While the initial designs were visually striking, they posed navigation challenges, making the user experience less intuitive. To address this, I refined the layout to streamline navigation and adjusted interactive elements to improve clarity and responsiveness. These changes allowed the microsite to maintain its strong visual appeal while ensuring it remained user-friendly, creating a seamless balance between aesthetic expression and functionality.