Magento Parade

• Store: spleen-art.com
• Creator: Mike Konjevic

About The Store

“We are two artists based in Berlin, Germany. A few weeks ago we came up with the idea of a print-on-demand-art-shop that is different from others. We wanted to sell our own artworks and didn’t find any platform – you know we didn’t want to see our work nearby a nice teetyweety-web2.0-glossy-graphics-picture-store.

But we just did not want to be different, our goal is to make strong visual concepts, from cutting edge artists around the globe, affordable.”

This screenshot shows a category page in the store. The dark background for the store was chosen to make the art look it's best.

The Magento Decision

“We both, Michel and myself, worked for many years as art directors and designers. After we read that Varien created an eCommerce solution, because none of the existing solutions met their needs, our decision for Magento was made.”

The home page displays a rotating banner display of featured art. The crisp clean look here sets the style for the rest of the store.

The Design Process

“We thought about a white interface in the first place but refused, because we think that a picture appears best on a black background.

We also wanted an interface which shows our professional approach and is restrained as much as possible to force the expression of the pictures.”

Design Review

The site homepage has a striking appearance, which perfectly compliments the style of artwork being sold. I do wonder how well it will work when there are various other style of art available.

The category pages are clean and simplistic, the careful use of carbon fibre texturing below each image really adds to the generally well put together appearance.

The store is available in two languages and multiple currencies which makes excellent use of Magentos features. The store itself is still under construction. I was fortunate enough to get a sneak peak at it during development, so expect big things to come from this store, the launch is early April.

I’ll be voting 5 stars for this store – it’s very original, and the design really fits with the products being sold How well those two elements continue to match as the artist range is expanded, remains to be seen!