Objective

The Imagists were a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, working in the 1960’s-70’s. Pentimenti Productions wanted to design and develop an immersive online archive for the Chicago Imagists as a supplement to the feature-length documentary film. The primary goals were public engagement with the history covered in the film, and creating a website geared towards a wide audience that would be home to a selection of the archival material shown in the film. For both these reasons, they wanted a website that could stay relevant for as long as possible.

Execution

For a group of artists known for their fantasy-based art making, the visual style had to compliment their enthusiasm. Following the aesthetic threads of the many influences the Imagists had led to solutions that were vibrant, witty, artistically eccentric and attractive. Focusing on the mechanics of color, the visual language was simple, bold, and understandable. Each section was assembled in a surprising way—inspiring, funny, memorable and different from the other.

The site launched in February 2014, and in June 2020 the New Yorker wrote a post about how it was an enduring companion to the documentary film.

http://chicagoimagists.com/