Lonely Walls. A fine art marketplace and networking platform

Lonely Walls is a Seattle-based startup that created a mobile app to help local artists find venues to exhibit their art.

About the project

Every wall has a story to tell

The idea of an app that would directly connect artists to collectors and business owners came to Charles Doyon after years in photography and tech industry. Lonely Walls became a bold project that touched upon a business model no one else did.

Mission

Lonely Walls believes art should be for everybody and that artists deserve to make a living wage from their art. With that in mind, Lonely Walls have for mission to completely disrupt the art market and to flip it on its head. With Lonely Walls, any public space can become an art venue.

Design Philosophy

A business tool designed for art and artists

For many years creatives were forced to use general instruments to conduct business. Those instruments wouldn’t cater to the needs of the artistic community, which are different from other industries. Lonely Walls puts artists in front. Everything they do is to empower artists to make better informed decisions and highlight their creative potential.

Design features

Dark theme
Wall textures
Modular patterns
High compatibility with any artwork
Robust app functionality
Proprietary matching algorithm

Inspiration

The world of art is limitless. Our perception of it is just a snapshot of our current vision, mood, and ability to interpret information. We wanted to capture this fleeting moment of transience when you take in an artwork, feel its vibrance and find your self on the verge of the desire to own it.

The cubic concept The spacial concept

The cubic concept

The cubic concept was inspired by sheer name of Lonely Walls and spoke of rooms, shadows, lights, and frames. It naturally flowed into the realm of geometric abstract art and its derivatives.

The spacial concept

In search for more depth and dimension, we also explored the subject of 3D shapes, intersection and interaction between various geometric forms.

The iconic monogram

The idea to use the counter forms of two very graphical letters, L and W, made the most sense combined with basic geometric shapes. We put the logo into a frame as if to “hang it on the wall” so that it would represent the universal token of the Lonely Walls ecosystem – a picture on the wall.

Final loсkup

The final lockup came to fruition after we decided to compensate the sharp angles of the symbol with a smooth wordmark. For it, we have used a lower-case variation of a serif font in an unusual scaling to the symbol. This made a logo easily distributable between two standalone elements that could be used together or separately based on the medium.

Brand collateral

As an organizer tool of impromptu exhibitions, Lonely Walls relies on recognition to facilitate trust and allow people invest their time and money in this relationship. To help gain this recognition, we designed a minimalist set of collateral brand material including stickers, coasters, merch, and stationery.

Real-world usage Venue context

Real-world usage

The interesting part of designing brand collateral for Lonely Walls was the fact that we could not identify the magnitude of applications that the brand might have when it’s on the free roam. We were targeting local businesses like coffee shops and restaurants to display art via the LW app but could it potentially reach beyond? Exhibitions? Galleries? Expos? To cater to all of those possible variations, we’ve created a universal brand language and tested it on various media.

Venue context

Designing for large media was fun but the main focus had to on smaller details – things like artwork wall tags, small printed hand-outs, promotional posters, etc. Because the logo uses a counter form of the letter L on top of the W graphic, it’s easy to replace that graphic with any artwork, which makes the logo easily adjustable to any artist, genre, interior, and context.

Digital media

The flagship of the Lonely Walls brand is the mobile app we designed. Its primary focus though, is not art. Its UX is entirely focused on the ease and clarity of interaction between artists, venue managers, and collectors. The exhibition arrangement algorithm is a state-of the-art social mechanic that can’t be found in any other digital product. The second digital brand product is the landing page with a beautiful hero graphic displaying art of the endorsed LW artists.

Outcome

Lonely Walls came to us as with a beautiful and insightful idea and a set of sketches but left with a solid brand vision and a strong digital presence. There were hundreds of art shows and local exhibitions organized within the app making the founders’ dream of empowering artists a reality.