Center for Art Design and Visual Culture

The Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture is an art center inside the University of Maryland. I led the creative direction and strategy for its first real digital home with matching personality that present exhibitions properly, their breadth of programming and to basically let the work lead.

The challenge was to design their platform that felt distinctly CADVC while living entirely inside the constraints of a public institution.

Key Pain Points

Exhibitions, research, and faculty projects had nowhere to live and nothing to frame them.

The university system left no room for personality, storytelling, or real exhibition presentation.

Entire audiences were locked out before the work could reach them.

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Let the work speak for itself

CADVC isn't a commercial gallery, so the site does not need to perform with the usual white wall, larger than life visuals. The design recedes when the work is present and hold structure when it isn't. Calm, authoritative, and unmistakably CADVC, without ever competing with what it's showing.

Discovery and workshops surfaced many answers. They wanted a calm, authoritative posture that keeps the work central. I translated that ethos into a design system my team then built out.

Clean typography, generous whitespace, and a muted palette that steps back when exhibition imagery is present and carries the structure when it isn't.

Every component adapts across exhibitions, past shows, publications, events, and faculty work without losing coherence.

A modular, intuitive CMS lets CADVC's small staff and seasonal graduate students publish and update independently.

Every decision aligned to WCAG 2.2 AA from the start and not an afterthought.

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The site was launched on schedule in time for the start of a new academic year

• 9-month delivery timeline
• WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards
• SEO and performance optimization

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