Art Starts at ArtStart

ArtStart, the Portal for Art in The Netherlands. At least that's what it is intended to become. We started almost 5 months ago and last week we gave a presentation towards school, the organization and Thieme ICT, the company who provided the environment where could work on this project.

In february the project-assignment was shown in a presentation of Projects within "Medialab" (which is a part of the CMD education within the College-University of Rotterdam) and those who had an interest could sign up for this project. There was a small waiting list but because I was one of the first to sign up, I had the chance to be on the project. The project with its intention to build the biggest art platform of the Netherlands had started, in a total with 6 students.

Our Job was to research the existing and create the new, and we came up with the following concept; Our platform (with an international attitude) is aimed primarily at art lovers, secundairy are the artists and the galleryholders, which are not stated in the previous ArtStart, and who are now an essential part of what is about to become. Because ArtStart now has to be realized; and it's not open to public at the moment, I can only give some previews of the concept without taking it into detail.

Mainly, the biggest improvent and change within ArtStart is the image browsing, not knowing what you are looking for (blueberry picking technique's). A widescreen browser, a wall of artworks which reacts on the movement of your mouse. Never ending browsing, filtering results to your own interest, and save those interests as specified and personal filters.

With our platform, the most astonishing is that it is going to be totally customizable to your needs; including customizable news letters, agenda events, tips and tricks; the entire content. The pages are all dynamic, you can even drag and drop several items and you can create, collect, save, favorite and share your personal "art bar".

Blurry? Well... can't tell more, you will have to wait for a few months and see for yourself. But you can see the prototype by clicking here . But please notice that with creating this concept, we have done a lot of research including fieldresearch questionnaires reaching over 1000+ respondents and deskresearch examining more than 30 art related websites.

And now after these months of hard work it is very nice to hear our client is more than pleased, as well as our mental coach and even the programmers at Thieme ICT who are anxious to start building... and the project graded just yet with a straight A, as well as the personal assesments of most people working in this team.