© 2 0 2 4 ——— w e b s i t e / h o m e
Sven G.
w e b s i t e / h o m e ——— © 2 0 2 4
Sven G.
A website honoring nature photographer and educator Sven Gillsäter.
Domain setup, website installation, layout and logo design, implementation, optimisation, testing and debugging, tool training sessions, launch.
Website designer
Domain setup, website installation, layout and logo design, implementation, optimisation, testing and debugging, tool training sessions, launch.
About the project
Sven Gillsäter was a famous Swedish nature photograpgher who wrote and collaborated on books, wrote aritcles for Swedish and international magazines and became a national celebrity for his nature films and documentaries. He’s come to be known as a Swedish David Attenborough.
Sven’s children, Pia and Björn, contacted me in 2020 and asked if I could create the website in their Gillsäter 100 project, which aimed at celebrating Sven’s 100th birthday. The website therefor launched on his centennial birthday, on February 28th 2021.
The website is one part of the project, funcitoning as an online museum where Sven’s memory and his works will forver be preserved and where fine print arts of his best photographs can be ordered. The other part is a coffee table book which was launced in September 2021.
“Sigrid has done a remarkable job with the website. It is so beautiful, clean, logical, and inviting – and she also made it fun."
Design choices
I decided to keep the website very clean and minimal, letting the pictures speak for themselves without too many decorative elements or colors pulling focus. As Sven was mostly active in the 1960-80’s, he only shot on film with a large part of the photos being in black and white. Therefor, the color palette is a crisp white background with contrasting black text and a few elements in grey.
As this website isn’t for a brand but more so a memorial website and personal portrait, there’s no brand guide or graphic profile to adapt to. No fonts or logos. I had to start from scratch, getting to know Sven through his children to gather enough information to create a design that could represent him.
For the headline font, I searched for a font similar to the one used on the cover of his published works, and tried to replicate that. The signature logo at the top of the site was added rather late in the design process. I felt like something decorative was missing in the simplicity of it all and I instantley knew what I wanted it to be. We scanned Sven’s handwritten signature and digitalised it, and added the project’s title (which is also the title of the coffee table book created as part of the project) underneath and it really made such a difference and added a greater sense of the website being truly a part of Sven.
