ArtThrob is a site covering South African art, with opinions, reviews, and features. ArtThrob has been running online since 1998. Blackman Rossouw has a close relationship with the art magazine ArtThrob, with both of us working for the site at various times. We redesigned the look of the site.
ArtThrob is South Africa’s leading contemporary visual arts publication, with a focus on quality reviews and features on art, and supporting artists and art writers. Sustained through donations of artworks, ArtThrob is a model of independent and sustainable arts journalism.
Founded as a one-person site by Sue Williamson in August 1997, ArtThrob has since expanded to many times its original size, with thousands of articles in its archive.
ArtThrob's impulse was to move away from the clean, white cube design common to many websites covering art, and which had defined their aesthetic for 20 years. They also wanted to invoke a sense of the cultural journalism from a pre-Internet age, lively but trustworthy. And mostly they wanted rich colour and a bold approach.
We started with a font Recoleta from the foundry Latinotype, which evoked a strong 70s feel, and based the site around the font. We focused on bold colours and slightly jarring overlaps of text and images, coupled with an airy body font and plenty of negative space.
