L’Atelier Art Competition

L'Atelier is one of Africa’s most prestigious art competitions sponsored by ABSA bank. The website not only serves as a showcase for previous years’ art, but also provides information and tools for artists that would like to participate in the competition.

Our task was to redesign the website to enhance the overall user experience and increase competition registrations and entries for 2018. What initially appeared to be a website redesign quickly revealed a much broader challenge.

The experience relied heavily on manual and physical processes, creating barriers for artists entering the competition. Artists were required to travel to submit work, adjudicators manually reviewed submissions, and the business managed complex logistics through physical drop-off centres.

By rethinking the problem beyond the interface, we redesigned the organisation’s operations and created a new end-to-end user journey. This evolved into a connected digital ecosystem that supported artists, adjudicators, and the business more effectively.

The result was a 59% increase in artwork submissions and a 55% increase in top artworks through digital adjudication, while significantly reducing logistical overhead and removing the need for physical submissions.

Agency: Hellocomputer (Digital arm of FCB Johannesburg)  |  Executive Creative Director: Dane Bowen  |  Experience Design Lead: Natasha Maiselman  |  UI Designer: Natasha Maiselman  | UX Analysts & Architects: Kefiloe Mokate & Murunwa Masibigiri  |  Front End Developer: Marvine Bamba