PhotoSeed

Challenge:

David Spencer needed a site that would allow him the flexibility to document the wide range of work that is in his collection, from individual photographs, to logos, journals and woodcuts. The site required a robust tagging system to create relationships between works, allowing users the ability to quickly and easily explore the vast collection.

Solution:

Each item is entered individually and can be assigned tags on the fly. Relationships can also be set up between entries, for instance, an individual item can be tied to a journal, portfolio or volume. Entries can also be tied to blog posts and highlights. This allows the site to automate a large number of tasks. Portfolio, journal or volume pages will automatically import the appropriate items and related works will be pulled in via similar tags. However, David has control to fine tune and even override this as need be.

At launch, the site had over 2000 entries and this is only the tip of the iceberg. Nightly CRON jobs were set up to scrape necessary content into a flattened table. This dramatically sped up the search process.

The site also has a “Lightbox” feature, allowing people to save their favorites and create a shareable page that they can tweet, Facebook or share how they’d like.

I developed all of the front-end HTML, CSS and javaScript and developed the content management system using the TOKY in-house CMS, Eero. The homepage grid uses David DeSandro’s Masonry script.

Additional Credit

Jay David, Designer
David Spencer, Site Manager & Webmaster

Awards

Communication Arts selected this website as a “Webpick of the week” in October, 2011.
2012 Webby Nominee