Responses by Frédéric Paquet, cofounder/creative director, Viens-là

Background: On June 18th 2017, the Dapper Museum (Musée Dapper) in Paris, announced it would close. The Dapper Foundation wanted to focus on internationally promoting the traditional Sub-Saharan African arts, mostly by setting up exhibitions abroad and by supporting contemporary artists. General administrator Aurélie Leveau had said, “We will develop a new, different and adapted internet offer, which will bring added value to visitors and which can, outside of a physical space, exist off the walls.” Under these circumstances, Viens-là reshaped the digital communication strategy of the Foundation to answer the question: how to digitize the collection and strengthen both the website’s identity and its link to the Dapper Museum?

Highlights: When the museum closed, the Dapper Museum changed its name to the Dapper Foundation. It wanted a modern logo while retaining continuity with the old one. In particular, it was important to keep the symbol. The artistic direction aimed to be more editorial, and for users to have meaningful experiences through pictures, appearances, sounds and videos. The three tones of ochre represented the color of the African soil and the wood that was widely used in ancient art works.

Challenges: Enabling users to have the same experience on the website as at the museum; highlighting the collaboration between the Foundation and some contemporary artists; and integrating the shop into the website. Regarding the content, our objectives were to be informative with an easy access to definitions of some specific vocabulary, to communicate efficiently on the current activity of the Foundation and to create viral content that would be easy to share on social networks.

Favorite details: The Lexidapper, a dictionary that goes through all the pages on the site to underline certain words and link definition pages to them. All the content can also be shared on social networks. And the Wishlist, which also answers questions asked by anyone, from new users to teachers and researchers who share precise information. Users can save certain works of art, artists and products from the shop to her or his Wishlist.

Navigational structure: In order to create an immersive user experience, we had to consider the interface and interactions, which were first conceived and designed as wireframes. We chose a hamburger style menu, which enables users to find the following menus at the first level: About, Ancient art, Contemporary art, Resources, Agenda, News, Contact and Shop.