Architecture practice · 2024
Studio Meridian
An archive that argues for the practice
Meridian had completed 48 buildings and could show almost none of them. The site listed six projects as thumbnails, and the work that best explained the practice, the slow civic projects, was invisible. We designed an editorial archive where each project can be read rather than skimmed.
- Editorial design
- Portfolio
- Art direction
- Client
- Studio Meridian
- Sector
- Architecture practice
- Year
- 2024
- Disciplines
- Design, Branding
Challenge
What was in the way
The practice was winning work through reputation and losing pitches to studios with worse buildings and better pages. Prospective clients arrived from a search, saw six thumbnails with no context, and left without understanding what Meridian was for.
The material existed but was scattered: plans in one archive, photography across three photographers with different licensing, and project descriptions written for award submissions rather than for a client trying to decide.
Approach
How we worked
- 01
Treat each project as an essay
Every project got one page with a consistent spine: the brief, the constraint, the decision that mattered, and what it is like to be in the building. Photography is set at scale with real captions rather than cropped into a uniform grid.
- 02
A typographic system, not a template
The design carries the practice through type and rhythm rather than ornament. One display serif at three sizes, generous margins, hairline rules and a single ink colour, so the photography is the only thing on the page with any colour in it.
- 03
An archive the studio can keep filling
Content modelling came before layout. Projects, sectors, collaborators, awards and press are separate entities, so filtering by sector works properly and adding a project takes twenty minutes rather than a developer.
Deliverables
What we handed over
- Editorial design system and art direction
- Forty-eight project pages migrated and rewritten
- Sector, year and collaborator filtering
- Photography direction and licensing audit
- CMS modelling and studio training
- Press and awards archive
Results
What changed after launch
+214%
Enquiries
Project enquiry form submissions over twelve months against the previous year.
4m 40s
Average time on project pages
Against 38 seconds on the previous site, engaged sessions only.
48
Projects published
The full archive, up from six, with the studio publishing new work unaided.
“People arrive at the first meeting having already read three projects. The conversation is completely different.”
Stack and tools
What it runs on
Design
- Editorial type system
- Art direction
- Print-informed grid
Build
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Headless CMS
- Responsive image pipeline
Content
- Structured project model
- Migration tooling
- Studio training
Timeline
How long it took
- Weeks 1 to 3
Content strategy
Archive audit, content model, and the writing template every project page follows.
- Weeks 4 to 8
Design
Type system, project template, and three projects designed in full before the rest were signed off.
- Weeks 9 to 14
Build and migration
Component build, image pipeline, and 48 projects migrated with rewritten descriptions.
- Week 15
Handover
Studio training, documentation, and a publishing checklist for new work.