The pandemic of 2020 presented an unprecedented challenge for cultural institutions. We’ve been with with our clients every step of the way, creating projects that run the gamut of adaptations undertaken by the industry. We built “At Home” sections for the Andy Warhol Museum and the Akron Art Museum; we designed and developed virtual events for the Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles, and Pleasure Dome, Toronto; and we created a bring-your-own-device web app for the Hammer Museum. Read more
We worked The Andy Warhol Museum, conducting a comprehensive overhaul of warhol.org. Launched in May 2017, The redesign included migrating the backend to WordPress, redesigning the frontend, establishing a content strategy, implementing a new information architecture, and auditing and rewriting all text and images.
As part of our ongoing work with The Santa Cruz MAH, we recently refreshed the microsite used for membership renewals. The site is build on WordPress and Gravity Forms, with various plugins providing functionality including those from For Gravity, gravity+ and Gravity Wiz. Read more
I’m happy to have launched the website for artist Mel Chin’s land art project, The Tie That Binds, part of CURRENT:LA Water, Los Angeles’s inaugural public art biennial.
Originally from Houston Texas, Mel Chin is known for works that require multi-disciplinary, collaborative teamwork that conjoin cross-cultural aesthetics with complex ideas. Read more
Led by Principal Joel Sanders, JSA “creates innovative and sustainable environments in response to today’s rapidly changing culture.” Sanders is a Professor of Architecture at Yale University and former Director of the Graduate Program in Architecture at Parsons School of Design. Read more
Founded by Martin C. Pedersen and Steven Bingler, Common Edge is a non-profit organization dedicated to “reconnecting architecture and design with the public that it’s meant to serve.” The website features essays, interviews and commentary by architects and thinkers in the field. Read more
I’m leading, with collaborator Sarah Wambold, a nationwide study into the motivation of visitors to museum websites. As of this writing we have 22 participating institutions, including representatives in Canada and Australia.
The VMS on the website of the Menil Collection
Background
Google Analytics is a powerful tool in understanding traffic to a website, but site statistics alone do not always tell the full story. Read more
Top of the MAH homepage, desktop view
We’re excited to have launched a new homepage for the Santa Cruz Museum of Art And History! It’s the fruit of a year of development, analytics and design.
Led by Executive Director Nina Simon, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is a participatory museum. Read more
Next month I’ll be teaching a workshop, Websites for Artists at LIFT in Toronto. It’ll take place Monday, December 14 and Wednesday, December 16 2015, from 6 to 10 pm. From the programme:
This two-evening workshop provides an overview of how to establish a web presence to compliment your artistic practice. Read more
Clockshop homepage
Clockshop is an arts organization in Los Angeles, working “at the intersection of politics, urban space, and cultural production to explore the forces that shape our lived environment.” They do a lot of site-specific programming involving locations and communities in the city. Read more
In 2014 I was fortunate to work with A Strange Object , a small press in Austin Texas, on Covered with Fur, their vision for an online literary magazine. I became involved during the later stages of the process, to help them with their final push, and was curious to know how the project had developed from inception. So I asked my collaborator Joe Costello, a usability specialist with a background in small press publishing, to flesh out the story...
I recently redesigned the top-navigation of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History's website. Working closely with Museum staff, I simplified the nav and introduced a modern, mobile-responsive interface pattern.
clyffordstillmuseum.org
Featuring a bold, responsive design, the new website for the Clyfford Still Museum launched in October, 2014. This new site helps the museum position itself as a destination, a site of pilgrimage for art lovers interested in the life and work of master abstract expressionist painter Clyfford Still. Read more
This post is based on a report produced for Spellerberg Associates by Amanda Moon and Marian Oman. Their research was conducted at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin as part of a usability course taught by Randolph Bias. Read more
Museum Camp
Museum Camp is an annual conference produced by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. The format is similar to a hack-a-thon: Participants have 72 hours to work on a project consistent with a theme. This year’s theme was “Social Impact Assessment” and involved conducting research projects based on different locations around Santa Cruz. Read more
Working with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, we recently completed a redesign of the Exhibitions area of the Museum’s website. The project was a collaboration between Spellerberg Associates and staff at the MCA.
On the front-end, we implemented a mobile-responsive design reflecting a contemporary interpretation of the Museum’s established visual identity. Read more
Nicholas Calcott was born in 1983 in Midland, MI. He currently lives and works in New York, NY. Visit website.
Project team
Designed by Everything Type Company.
Developed by Marty Spellerberg / Spellerberg Associates. Read more
popupmuesum.org
A Pop Up Museum is a of temporary exhibit created by the people who show up to participate. It works by choosing a theme and venue and then inviting people to bring an object on-topic to share. The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History hosts Pop Up Museums throughout Santa Cruz County in partnership with community organizations, businesses, and schools. Read more
In 2014, The Heckscher Foundation for Children celebrated over ninety-three years of support to hundreds of organizations and programs, serving needy children and youth. Visit website.
Project Team
Designed by Everything Type Company.
Developed by Marty Spellerberg / Spellerberg Associates. Read more
Prior to founding TW Ryan Architecture in 2013, Thomas W. Ryan was a designer at Richard Meier & Partners and an associate at Christoff : Finio Architecture in New York. Visit website.
Project Team
Designed by Everything Type Company.
Developed by Marty Spellerberg / Spellerberg Associates. Read more
Goshka Macuga is the MCA Chicago's 2013 Artist In Residence. But because the resulting work, likely to be a play, will not exist until the end of the term, the artist's process is being documented and presented to the public as Preparatory Notes for a Chicago Comedy. Our team became involved as interactive media designers/developers...
lanaslezic.com
Lana Šlezić’s work has documented the plight of women and children. Her book Forsaken studied the conditions faced by women in Afghanistan. Her next project, A Walk in the Park portrays street kids in India. She is currently based in Canada. Read more
pdome.org
I recently launched a new website design for storied Toronto film & video collective Pleasure Dome. Driven by the bin-packing layout library Packery, the new design reconfigures content boxes of various sizes to fit the available screen space. This, combined with responsive design techniques, means the site works across a full range of modern devices, such as phones, tablets and desktop computers. Read more
camla.org
The Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles wanted a Content Management System, so that non-technical staff could make changes on their own. And, based on the experience using it for the Origins site, they wanted WordPress. So that’s exactly what we did! Read more
join.santacruzmah.org
I’ve been working with the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History to develop a series of low-tech, low-cost strategies and systems to track, celebrate, and act on personal interactions with visitors.
“Like many small museums, the MAH cannot afford expensive ticketing or membership software systems,” says Executive Director Nina Simon. Read more
missionhistory.org
I’m happy to report the launch of Exploring the California Missions, a website I designed and developed for The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Using the lens of California Mission history, Exploring the California Missions presents a suite of lessons intended to help teachers and fourth grade students develop the critical skills needed to work with primary sources. Read more
adamnadel.net
Adam Nadel’s photographic practice is located “at the intersections of journalism, science, and human rights.” He knew exactly what he wanted and was a joy to work with! Using the WordPress-based package I’ve been developing, we were able put his site together quickly and efficiently. Read more
I’m happy to launch a new website for documentary photographer Samuel A. James, an American working in Nigeria. The site runs the WordPress theme/plugin package I’ve dubbed “Carolyn”, after its initial commissioner, Carolyn Drake. The idea behind this package is to create a system that can be used to quickly deploy portfolio sites of a certain kind. Read more
Like many of my museum colleagues, I’m a big fan of Nina Simon’s blog, Museum 2.0. When the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, of which she is the director, needed a new website, I jumped at the opportunity. Simon praised my work, saying,
“Marty is everything I could have wanted from a designer — he overdelivered on my vague directives and pushed me to think more rigorously about what we were trying to do.” Read more
Carolyn Drake’s website
I recently had the pleasure of creating sites with documentary photographer Carolyn Drake. Carolyn has an amazing eye and strong sense of narrative, which she brought to her layout and navigation. This site is built on WordPress, with custom gallery-presentation plugins and theme. Read more
Andres Gonzalez’s website
I recently had the pleasure of creating sites with documentary photographer Andres Gonzalez. EachAndreshas an amazing eye and strong sense of narrative, which he brought to his layout and navigation. The site is built on WordPress, with custom a gallery-presentation plugin and theme. Read more
An artist’s project I collaborated on has recently launched. Or I should say re-launched, as it existed before; I’ve been involved in getting it back to fighting form.
Honoria in Ciberspazio is Honoria Starbuck’s jam. Begun in 1997, it’s “the first internet opera” — written via online collaboration and performed via webcast, with the online condition as its subject. Read more
An artist’s project I collaborated on has recently launched. Or I should say re-launched, as it existed before; I’ve been involved in getting it back to fighting form.
Belog is Tiffany Malakooti’s jam. She’s assembled a collection of Persian art and culture that is beautiful and often quite funny. Read more
Multiple on the Wednesday Cooper website.
What’s your favorite super power? Flight? Strength? Invisibility? For as far back as I can remember, mine has had to do with time: I wish I could do two things at once.
The closest example in mainstream comics is Marvel’s Multiple Man. Read more
b12partners.net/photo
Photographer Seth Anderson is based in Chicago, a city that is often his subject. Prolific on Flickr, his images are frequently licensed for reproduction in blogs, books, documentaries and other media. We created a site that makes it easy to order physical prints. Read more
interrogationbook.com
Donald Weber is a photographer with the VII Network, mainly studying post-Soviet authority in Ukraine and Russia. With this site Don is offering a series of photographs in Kickstarter-like support of his forthcoming documentary photography book. I see it as an experiment in the disruption of the traditional ways and means of Art capitol using internet technologies. Read more
Midi Onodera is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker/moving image artist who creates shorts intended for “small screen” podcasting. This redesign includes a visual overhaul based on a look mocked-up by designer Ruby Pajares, and a full refactoring of the theme’s codebase. The fonts are Chaparral Pro and Museo Sans. Read more
Chris Kennedy is a filmmaker, film programmer and writer whose work “operates in dialogue with the history of film as art.” This is Chris’ first site and serves as a calling-card for his pedagogical work. I wanted the stills from his films to be the primary visual statement, with the rest of the design as quiet as possible. Read more
Convenience shows work “that engages, experiments, and takes risks with the architectural, urban, and civic realm.” The site architecture is straightforward: present the exhibitions in reverse chronological order. So for this redesign we applied simple accordion navigation to open-up past entries. Read more
I’m happy to announce a new website for Toronto-based artist Flavio Trevisan. Flavio makes sculptures, mostly, based on maps. The site is a pretty straight-forward WordPress implementation. Check it out! Read more
The AGO had a lot riding on King Tut in 2010. The museum reopened to great fanfare the year before, but the recession hit hard and revenue targets were proving hard to hit. A 1979 Tut exhibition had sparked “Tutmania” throughout Canada and brought more than 750,000 visitors to the AGO; the museum hoped the sequel would prove a comparable blockbuster. Read more
As an employee of the Art Gallery of Ontario, I am a member of OPSEU Local 535. I got involved this year as part of the communication committee, designing the Local’s newsletter and, recently, website. Check it out! Read more
The Archive and Everyday Life Conference, held May 6–8, 2010 at McMaster University, examined how fields of archive intersect with everyday life. The conference program includes panel discussions, screenings, and visual art.
Midi Onodera’s year-long 2009 video project A Movie A Week was on view in the accompanying group exhibition held at Hamilton Artists Inc. Read more
The 2010 redesign for Donald Weber’s WordPress-based website features a side-scrolling slideshow for the narrative presentation of images as well as pages for the promotion of the photographer’s books and grant-writing workshops.
Donald Weber’s website is hosted by MediaTemple. Read more
Well, here it is. In the first of four planned releases we’ve introduced a look and feel constructed around the AGO’s new graphic identity. It’s the result of a team effort, and seasons of research.
From a development perspective it’s simply a re-skinning of the legacy ColdFusion site; the CMS we’ve been implementing with Devlin will debut in the coming months. Read more
Announcing the launch of Bell Lightbox! The website is a refresh of the former Bell Festival Centre site, incorporating the Envisioning + Storytelling creative, new renderings by KPMB and the TIFFG framing. The website was created in-house at the Toronto International Film Festival Group by developers Marty Spellerberg and Richard Norman, and programmer Gabriel Perez. Read more
Announcing the redesign of the Toronto International Film Festival Group ! It was designed and built in-house by developer Marty Spellerberg.
Check out the Toronto International Film Festival Group! Read more
The 2007 Toronto International Film Festival is now live! The website was created in-house at the Toronto International Film Festival Group by Developers Richard Norman and Marty Spellerberg; Programmers Gabriel Perez and Ric Pettit; Coordinator Neil Haapamaki and Project Manager Alice Ko. Our favorite features are the Flickr-powered galleries and the Google-powered maps. Read more
Announcing the redesign of Maquina / Jaime Leblanc Photography! Based in Montreal, Leblanc is published in The Walrus and Half Empty magazines. The site was created by developer Marty Spellerberg and built on WordPress. It is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict.
Check out Maquina! Read more
This prototype Store Locator was created in-house at Canadian Tire Corporation in late 2006 by developer Marty Spellerberg using JavaScript and the Google Maps API.
Check out the Canadian Tire Interactive Map! Read more
Announcing the redesign of Jim Ross, Toronto Photographer! The site was created by developer Marty Spellerberg and built on WordPress. It is valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
Check out Jim Ross Photographer! Read more
Proudly announcing the redesign of Bell Festival Centre! Coinciding with the groundbreaking at King and John Streets in Toronto, the website was created in-house at the Toronto International Film Festival Group by developer Marty Spellerberg and programmer Gabriel Perez.
Check out Bell Festival Centre! Read more
Announcing a site-wide update of Superslackers! Produced by Steven Charles Manale, Superslackers is published weekly by The Toronto Star and is nominated for Top Canadian Web Comic, Joe Shuster Awards.
The site is built on WordPress and is Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict. Read more
Announcing the redesign of Pleasure Dome! Now in it’s 18th year of programming, Pleasure Dome is a year-round film and video exhibition group dedicated to the presentation of experimental film and video.
The site is built on WordPress, and features posters by Sameer Farooq, NEW INK. Read more
Proudly announcing the redesign of Donald Weber Photojournalism! Don Weber is Canadian, based in Moscow. He’s published in Newsweek, Time, Maclean’s, The New York Times, The Globe & Mail, others.
The site features big, 800px images and is built on WordPress. Read more
