The Typography System Behind Strawhouse
Type choices for an unlaunched gallery site: a serif for exhibitions, a plain sans for descriptions, and what that layout costs.
Strawhouse is a gallery site I designed that hasn't launched, so there's no public link yet. This note is about its type system, not a finished product.
Many gallery sites borrow the layout of a shop: a grid of thumbnails, prices and filters. I wanted Strawhouse to read more like an exhibition catalog, where the text around a work is set with the same care as the hang.
The Hierarchy
Exhibition titles are set large in Sentient, a serif, at its regular 400 weight, so they have presence without the weight of a bold. Artist names are in title case, never all caps, so a name reads as a name rather than a label.
Body text is General Sans with generous line spacing and a ragged right edge. Justified text opens uneven gaps between words, and in short gallery descriptions those gaps show.
The Tradeoff
An editorial layout takes more vertical space than a grid, so fewer works fit on screen at once. For a small gallery showing a few artists at a time, I chose reading over browsing density. A larger catalog would need a denser index beside it.