2018 / case study

Marie Cécile Thijs.

A photography portfolio designed to put the work before the design.

the photographs do the talking.

Marie Cécile Thijs is one of the Netherlands' leading staged-photography artists. The site is built as a slow, considered exhibition with a custom WordPress back-office. Live since 2018 and still managed by the artist herself.

YEAR

2018

ROLE

UX/UI Design · Front-End · WordPress

TEAM

Solo

STACK

WordPress · custom front-end

LAUNCH

mariececilethijs.com · 2018

STATUS

Live

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the problem.

Marie Cécile's photographs are staged, considered, slow. The work has a specific stillness to it that a stock portfolio template would have flattened. The brief: a website that carries the photographs the way the photographs carry themselves, as art rather than as a portfolio template. And a back-office calm enough that the artist could publish without me in the loop.

the process.

An art-grade front-end paired with a back-office calm enough to hand the keys to the artist on launch day.

Listen to the work before drawing

Read the work before drawing. The photographs have a specific stillness that no portfolio template would survive; the design had to learn that stillness before it could carry it.

Design the front as an exhibition

Slow pacing, generous whitespace, restrained typography, no decorative chrome competing with the photographs. The website reads as a digital exhibition rather than a portfolio template. The photographs do the speaking; the design holds the silence.

Let typography do the heavy lifting

On a site this quiet, type does most of the work. Serif headings tuned to the artist's tone, body type that breathes, captions that defer to the image. The type stays out of the artwork's way.

Build a back-office that disappears

Built custom management screens inside the WordPress back-end so the artist can publish, restructure series, and manage exhibitions without me in the loop.

Hand it over for the long run

Final design and custom WordPress build, handed over with documentation calm enough that the artist could keep using it herself. Eight years later she still does.

live since 2018, still managed by the artist.

Marie Cécile Thijs launched at mariececilethijs.com in 2018. Eight years on, the design holds up and the artist runs her own publishing rhythm without my involvement.

Designed the website as an exhibition, not a portfolio

Photography did the speaking; the design held the silence.

Built a custom WordPress back-office the artist actually uses

Live publishing without me in the loop since 2018.

Held up across eight years of artist-led updates

Typographic and spatial integrity still intact from the original design.

years later, it still works

The real measure of a back-office isn't launch day. Marie Cécile has been managing the website herself since 2018, without my involvement, which is the kind of win that doesn't show up in a screenshot.

Plenty of beautifully designed websites work fine on day one and fall apart by year three, either because the person they were built for can't actually use the back-end, or because the system was over-engineered for a project that needed restraint. Marie Cécile's site is the opposite case: a small footprint, well-judged constraints, a publishing flow that does exactly what the artist needs and nothing else.

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