Finalist 2023

Book an Artist

Book an Artist / Your Creative

Book an Artist is a two-sided marketplace democratising public access to commissioned artwork.

Book an Artist is a two-sided marketplace for creators and commissioners of art. The platform makes it easier for people and artists to connect, collaborate and in short, make more art. It’s about making original art, boosting creativity and encouraging the art community to grow internationally. The idea was to enable creativity that was accessible — no matter where you were or who you were.

Design Brief:

The goal for the refreshed brand was to make art more accessible and collaborative on a global scale. The business was growing in key markets such as Australia, UK, and Singapore, highlighting the need to solidify brand positioning and visuals.

As a marketplace, the brand and platform had to resonate with multiple user groups - artists and customers. For the artist, Book An Artist needed to feel empowering, championing their work, and supporting their commercial needs. For customers, communication design needed to create an easy-to-use space where people felt safe to collaborate and be creative — a vital aspect for the service to thrive.


This project was developed by:

Design Process

Running a series of workshops in our Melbourne studio, we ventured deep into the research phase exploring every touchpoint and user scenario to define the audience and visualise what was possible in terms of growth.

From workshop learnings and insights, it was clear the design solution would need to reflect the sophisticated capabilities of the marketplace, underpinned by the creativity behind each project. Maintaining cohesion across language and visuals, we developed a digital-first brand identity that maintained a connection to the tactile and hand-made origins of art making.

After initially being engaged in a rebrand project, focusing on the core brand aspects ourselves, the client realised that we needed to go further and expand the project to ensure we could marry creativity with advanced user experience.

A connection to art and its creators was put front and centre, throughout the user journey, translating to digital applications, website modularity, and social channels. The marketplace provides a web app, an artist app for managing payments, jobs and profiles, and a customer-facing portal that manages the creative process from end to end.

Design Excellence

Book An Artist provides a new benchmark for the intersection of brand and user experience. With the continual expansion of Book an Artist in mind, our visual communication of the brand prioritized practicality at every stage.

The competitor analysis looked at leading marketplaces with similar functionality namely Airtasker, Airbnb and Fiverr. The question was, could we marry creative form with extensive function?

By putting brand experience at the core of a highly functional web app, Book An Artist invites artists and customers to not lose sight of creativity and instead use the digital tool to further a collaborative creative process.

Unlike other leading marketplaces, Book An Artist injects creativity and art throughout. Its success proves a poignant point that digital design isn’t just about optimising user flows — there is room for creativity and its added value to how you can experience a digital product.

Design Innovation

For users, the refreshed brand has led to significantly increased engagement. Tools that were available previously but lacked accessible design such as split payments, are now in use across creative projects. Simply put, BAA’s identity and brand experience now aligns with the business’s purpose — to empower artists, creating a new global economy where artists can create and financially support their practice.

Commercially, we have added value to both the business as a whole by ensuring it competes from a brand perspective with the likes of global players, whilst retaining its unique positioning as championing the artists and their art.

Practically, the design system has provided the BAA team with a visual direction and toolkit to expand globally, now servicing Europe and America. BAA can now grow organically without the help of outside investment.

Design Impact

The new brand system gives the business the platform and design assets to streamline marketing activities as the business scales. Book An Artist’s key messaging work also becomes a tool to ensure brand consistency, taking into account its international growth — and its expansion into new services offered.

The new proposition brings to market a cohesive voice for both, artists and the target audience with a creative, brand-led narrative.

Book An Artist is now a modern, easy-to-use, marketplace leader that is dedicated to representing artists across the world and connecting them to people. The business is prepped for widespread marketing activities with design assets and tools that can be easily adapted to situations as needed.

Ultimately, we wanted to create a global, streamlined, and accessible platform for art that instantly connects artists and art commissioners in their local areas — and we did.

Circular Design and Sustainability Features

Book an Artist assists in cultivating localised economies of art making and commissioning. By doing so the platform aims to contribute to the reduction of the consumption of mass made art product and decor whilst strengthening the role and values of the individual when producing bespoke artwork.

Digital Design 2023 Finalists

HalleyAssist HealthWatch® - Remote Patient Monitoring

HalleyAssist Pty Ltd / La Trobe University, Centre for Technology Infusion / Northern Health, Patient Watch Program / Proactive Ageing

GetMee

GetMee - Balendran Thavarajah / AMES Australia - Mirta Gonzalez- General Manager of Education / VFS Global- Harpreet Singh- Global Lead- Australia and New Zealand Regional Head / VFS Global / Deakin University- Dr. Pubudu Pathirana & Carol Doyle- CEO You Study International College / GetMee Anjali Kushwah - Experience Designer

BUBBLE

Spacesuit&Co / Mirvac / The Ci Group

To Future Me

Kids First Australia / Curio

Chop Out Convos: Supporting mental health of tradies

IPC Health / No Moss / Tradies of West Melbourne

TLC for Kids "Tap 2 Distract" App

Avenue / TLC for Kids

UNICEF Australia Website

Luminary / UNICEF Australia

Headspace Homepage Redesign - Digital Design

Portable / headspace: National Youth Mental Health Foundation

Passing Electrical Storm

Shaun Gladwell / Stefan Greuter / Gerard Mulvany / Matthew Jigalin / Leigh Russell / Pete Grove