Hesah Al Hajeri as a young female artist creating her works in Kuwait. Hesah’s art mainly focuses on the Kuwaiti and Khaleeji heritage that were passed down through our past generations. As we progress through the years, everything is changing and even our culture is modernizing in a way. Hesah’s wish is to preserve our special heritage and culture through art and even client’s request memories that are of special value to them.
Her special accent/touch mainly involves gold (using 24k gold leaf, as well as silver leaf), which adds a luxurious accent to her art, also emphasizing how expensive our heritage and tradition is.
Website objective
Hesah reached out to me with a website project for her portfolio. She wanted to appear professional, and gather all her artworks in one place. She also wanted to make it easy for people to reach out and communicate with her through her professional e-mail. Hesah valued simplicity and accessibility. When she showed me few examples of the websites she liked, we decided that the main objective would be to showcase her art in a very clean way. Hence the muted colors.
Hesah wanted to focus more on her work and Kuwaiti heritage she is so passionate about. We kept copy to a minimum, allowing her work to speak for itself. We have also included her Instagram grid on the website, which doesn't require maintenance, yet refreshes website every time she posts something.
Here you can check the real life website I created for Hesah from scratch: hesahalhajeri.com
Website execution
When Hesah contacted me, she did not have any branding done for her creative brand. What came out as a result proved that branding was not essential in her case, as we created a portfolio website with her works. We did however go though couple of creative directions. This was done to tie up all the elements as outlined in objective, keep the website cohesive, and convey the feel of the artist. Creative directions included: font selection, color palette, button design, and possible images. Hesah uses gold leaf in her works, and my idea was to include golden strokes on her website to communicate that.
From there I created her website mock up. After approval, we took it to the website builder and there was a final result.
This project is a prime example that branding is not always essential to put the website together, if done strategically and with intent.
