Founders Holly Lander and Orla Bennett started Atomica as an alternative to 'traditional' gallery spaces. Affordable, ready to hang artwork, ceramics, vinyl collectables sit side by side with a soundtrack of vintage vinyl, punk and garage tunes.

This deliberately brash and playful personality is reflected in the brand identity through a loud, geometric logo and bright pastel colour palette - a bold look not normally associated with the minimal white walls of a gallery space. This branding was applied to all aspect of the business, including pop up spaces, social media channels, website, exhibition marketing and limited edition print production and packaging.

As a lean start up, the printed collateral and packaging was designed and produced to have the most impact with minimal investment and cost. A risographed suite of business cards, thank-you slips and certificates of authenticity were produced along with carefully selected off the shelf packaging materials and a hand held embossing stamp for limited editions and gift certificates.

The distinct pop colour branding was extended into other areas of the business including product photography and social media content. I created a series of custom social media posts including an animated set of Instagram GIFs created in After Effects as part of a Christmas Advent campaign.

With the gallery initially focused on physical pop-up spaces and events, the business has since began to pivot to a more content-led business model. Using their strong social media following - grown organically through their pop-up events, exhibitions and collaborations - as a spring board to an online-only business focusing on curated blog content.

Two key types of content were defined when designing the updated site. 'Featured' posts - consisting of top-tier, self-generated content such as artist interviews, studio visits, exhibition reviews and video content; and 'Curated' posts - made up of inspiration style reposts and aggregated content from relevant external sources. Two post layouts were designed to accommodate these different post types, showcasing and maximising users' exposure to the premium 'Featured' post content and making the most of the high-churn 'Curated' posts.

The entire site was first wireframed, with consideration given to potential ad space locations (using standard Google Ad Sense sizes), a complete e-commerce framework (based on WooCommerce), artist profile pages and archive of previous events and exhibitions. Currently in development.