web design / branding
Portfolio and logo design for actress Lisa Pilerud. Completely custom website built from the ground up using open source software, hosted locally.
Lisa approached me to create a website for her acting portfolio. Initially, it was just that; a website. After we consulted over the specifics, I suggested that it would be a better fit for her to showcase her complete identity through this website for potential casting agents.
This led us to create something beyond just videos and photos on a page, and show her creativity via a completely unique logo design, and a portfolio from scratch. Her requirements were straightforward: the identity has to be easy to read, memorable and not too over the top. As a motif, she suggested I could incorporate an arrow into the logo, as “Pil” means arrow in Swedish.
Early development experiments.
Lisa is a member of the movement group Shapes in Motion, which focuses on the dynamism and flow of acting through one’s body. My logo design process is based on this detail, capturing Lisa’s movement and energy, while also striking a balance between elegance and play.
For the logotype, I used the aptly called typeface “Melodrama”, which I customized to reduce the contrast between its strokes in order to achieve better readability at smaller scales, thus making it a suitable logotype. The lowercase “i” is drawn by hand, and it represents the motif and the point of interest of the design. I added it as a contrasting element to the overall serious typeface that is Melodrama, in order to show Lisa’s dichotomy and range in her acting abilities.
The website is designed with that same elegance and style in mind. It features subtle, dynamic transitions that respond to the user scrolling through the page to further tie together the concept of movement.
On the technical side, the entire website, as well as my own, are hosted from my bedroom using the official open-source WordPress images. These are running in a Kubernetes cluster, with multi-region load-balancing setup in case of downtime. The entire setup is production ready with regular off-site backups, a firewall and granular access control. Using my expertise with home labs, I was able to save us from spending a significant amount on hosting costs and vendor lock-ins. For the design, I was using a blank theme as a template and developed a custom design system with external libraries, typefaces and CSS for a more refined, unique look.
On top of this, I helped Lisa set up her own personal email address contact@lisapilerud.com, hosted at ProtonMail.
You can access Lisa’s website at https://lisapilerud.com