A design firm has used its creative talents to help more than 450 artists to publicise their activities more easily.

The online design team at Colchester-based Silk Pearce redesigned the Norfolk & Norwich Open Studios website to help attract new visitors, while adding a new web application to simplify the organisation of the annual art event, which is expected to attract 30,000 visitors.

The artists are due to host exhibitions and demonstrations at 231 locations across Norfolk.

Silk Pearce has redeveloped www.nnopenstudios.org.uk so that every artist signing up for future schemes can set up online accounts and directly input details of their planned activities. This new feature will significantly cut production timescales and costs, while allowing the content to be seamlessly transferred to the design team responsible for designing the Open Studios brochure and other promotional items. Previously all inputs had to be supplied on paper around six months before the start of the event and then re-keyed, checked and approved before anything could go to press.

Silk Pearce’s new vibrant and engaging visual design uses improved navigation, larger imagery and cleaner page layouts to present the site’s content in a more appealing way. More images can now be displayed per page to showcase the breadth of creative work on offer and each artist has an in-depth directory entry giving details of their approach, dates and times of their events, and a map and directions to their studios. Artists can now also include a photograph of themselves plus example work and all site content can be filtered by art form, region or opening date. Open Studios is managed by Norfolk & Norwich Festival and the site redesign features many of the colours and branding elements from the Festival’s own new visual identity.

“Silk Pearce has created an exciting new look and feel for the Open Studios site to improve the visitor experience but has also helped streamline our in-house production processes. Their recommended approach using online forms will save significant admin costs, eliminates several labour-intensive proofing stages and makes it easier to manage the subsequent mailing of brochures, posters and other materials. Every participating artist will also now have more time to decide what activities they can offer before finalising their details for print,” said Kirsty Falconer, Project Officer at Norfolk & Norwich Festival.