21 Nettleton Collection
An interactive art catalogue showcasing the international art collection of a luxury boutique hotel in Cape Town.
UX Design, UI Design, Project Management
The Concept: Digital Art Catalogue
Our client, 21 NETTLETON, is a luxury boutique hotel nestled on Lion's Head overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Town. The client looked for a way to showcase their international art collection to enrich the experience of the guests staying at the hotel.
I worked as a UX/UI Designer, taking the project through all the stages from information architecture, to wireframing and prototyping, to adding the final visual design.
Creating an Interactive Art Catalogue.
The goal of this digital product is to enrich the user's experience, whether they are a guest at the hotel or potential lead, by showcasing over 100 eccentric artworks on display in this hotel.
We created an engaging and interactive experience to connect the users to the artworks and the stories behind them.
Tour through the Hotel Rooms
The priority was to showcase the hotel rooms with the art mounted on the walls. The one function was for the digital experience to act as a marketing tool to attract potential guests, and in the same breath give the guests a feeling of what this hotel experience offers.
Interact and learn about Individual Artworks
We want a seamless experience for users between the real world and the virtual world, with information at their fingertips. While paging through the various rooms, the user can select different artworks to learn more about them.
First, the user clicks on the tapestry.
Clicking the artwork takes them to the individual artwork with history about the piece.
Clicking on the centred artwork enlarges it in a lightbox, then the user can scroll through.
'Art Collections' as a filter
The hotel has a rather extensive art collection with over 150 artworks, and more to be added. Instead of using a filter function to categorise the artworks, instead, we curated them into 'art collections', not unlike a traditional category.
These collections can be by theme, the room they occupy and the origin of the art.
Each room is classified into its own 'art collection'.
Artworks are also divided by theme and country of origin.
Designing across devices.
We approached this project from three different use cases:
a. guest uses the website during their stay at the hotel, using the
tablet in their hotel room.
b. an agent refers to the website to sell the hotel to guests.
c. guest independently finds website and wants to see what the hotel has to offer, comes across an interactive catalogue.
Adding the UI Layer
As 21 Nettleton is already an established brand of its own products, I had to align the style of the interactive catalogue to the existing visual language of the website. Nettleton uses photography as its main visual medium, with minimal copy, drawing attention to the architectural features of the hotel.
I did go further to add a secondary title font to the design and to increase the spectrum of the colour palette, taking inspiration from the rich warm colours in all the gold picture frames.
