Follow.art

The platform speaks to artists who don't ask permission to create, and the identity follows suit. In the wordmark, the dot sits at the top of the line instead of the bottom. Condensed letters are stretched, a typographic faux pas committed on purpose. Icons and accents are drawn as brush strokes and graffiti marks. The rules break in the details, never in the reading: wherever expressive type competed with legibility, legibility won.

The first concept looked for the platform's idea in famous double compositions: Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, Magritte's The Lovers, the Brezhnev–Honecker kiss on the Berlin Wall. Set in ovals inside the wordmark and touched with scribbles, each pair stood for a curator and an artist reaching toward each other. The final site took another route, but the concept showed us how much freedom the visual language could take. The dynamic letters, the palette and the typefaces all carried over.

The promotional site went live ahead of the platform to collect early-access sign-ups. That's the job of pre-launch SaaS landing page design: build an audience and test demand with real sign-ups instead of assumptions, before the full product exists. On the first screen, a ring of curator and artist profile cards turns through the wordmark in WebGL, so the network feels alive rather than like a catalog of profiles. WebGL also shows up where you wouldn't expect it: product screenshots bend in 3D like printed sheets, and brush strokes take the place of standard hover effects.

Behind the promotional site is the product itself: a social network for the art community, built as one custom system — digital identities, portfolios, a directory of professionals, a discussion board and a blog. Every scenario was designed around what curators and artists actually need, not copied from existing networks. Design and development ran side by side, so each decision was tested in the live product. The platform runs on Vue.js on the front end and PHP with Symfony on the back end, built for performance. The rules break in the brand; the scenarios stay predictable.

The Nexus Card is the core of the platform: business card, portfolio and profile in one. On the promotional site it appears the way it's used, as a profile and its share screen with a QR code, bent in 3D. A card takes about a minute to create, goes straight into Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, and can be shared by QR code, email, WhatsApp or link. Mediums, themes, experience, languages and CV sit in a quiet column so the work stays in front. Artists upload their own backgrounds, and a Support button accepts donations. Printed as a QR code beside a piece at an exhibition, it lets visitors back the artist on the spot. Here SaaS product design turns a feature into part of the artist's identity.

The Connectory is a directory of artists and curators, filtered the way professionals search: country, city, medium, themes, experience, education, artwork price range. Results switch between cards, a list and an artworks-only view, so a curator can find the piece first and the author second. A three-step guide helps new users get started: pick a goal, from mentorship to curating by concept, then a role, then the details. The interface stays strict, and the boldness moves to the guide's hand-numbered cards.

The Community Board is where connections turn into projects. Next to regular threads sits a dedicated Let's collaborate post — an open call that others can join, marked in handwritten script so it stands out in the feed. Insights, the platform's blog, publishes interviews with artists and articles on building an open art community.

The platform launched with registration and Nexus Cards, then grew in stages: the Connectory, the Community Board, paid features, each step shaped by user feedback. That's how we approach MVP development for startups: release the core, then build on what people actually use. Basic features stay free, while PRO members, marked with a brush-stroke badge, get profile statistics, card promotion and donations. The mobile version carries the full desktop functionality. 

Follow.art is the most awarded project in our portfolio: a Webby Award for Best Visual Design – Function, Site of the Day and the Developer Award on Awwwards, Website of the Day on CSSDA and FWA of the Day. The launch brought tens of thousands of people from the creative industry to the platform, which now has active users and paid subscriptions.

Studios usually build their expertise on one side: expressive startup website design or complex SaaS development. Follow.art needed both from one team, and that's the work we do as a product design and development company. The broken typographic rules, the WebGL landing page, the Nexus Card and the Connectory all serve one brief: help curators and artists find each other. A platform for art that doesn't ask permission, down to the dot in its name.