165 design references

Motion Moments photography wall

motionin.design

A wall of same-sized photos has a subject only after the page clears a hole around one of them and puts its name on that photo.

Visit website · motionin.design

What to look at

Small photos tile a white field. A round white hole in the middle holds one larger photo, a dusk house marked LANDSCAPE and Wide Open. At the lower left, small caps say A photography wall, then the serif Moments, then the line "The wall parts wherever your cursor goes." In the preview the hole leaves the center. A forest at the upper left is marked October Cathedral, and the upper right says MOVE · CLICK TO OPEN. The last frame swaps the hole for a white card: Russet Hour, a waterfall, Catskills, New York, 2022, one sentence, and Order print beside Inquire. Moments stays at the lower left.

The hole has left the center. A forest at the upper left is the subject, marked LANDSCAPE and October Cathedral, and the corner says to move and click to open.
The hole has left the center. A forest at the upper left is the subject, marked LANDSCAPE and October Cathedral, and the corner says to move and click to open.
After the click, the same kind of photo sits on a white card: Russet Hour, Catskills, New York, 2022, one sentence, and Order print beside Inquire. The wall fades behind it.
After the click, the same kind of photo sits on a white card: Russet Hour, Catskills, New York, 2022, one sentence, and Order print beside Inquire. The wall fades behind it.

Why it works

Same-sized photos with no gap give the eye nowhere to start, and the photo given a clearing of empty space is the one that gets the attention. That clearing also makes one photo unlike the similar tiles around it, and the item that differs is the one people remember. The tiles sliding out of the hole are the notice that the subject changed, but movement that never stops pulls the eye whether or not it helps, so words that appear under a pointer have to remain while the pointer rests on them. The Moments page says the hole holds still while the cursor rests inside it and only slides once the cursor leaves, and the frames show a name you can read, not a pause that was timed.

Try it

  1. Fill the first screen with the studio's own photographs, all one size, and put a category and a short name on each.
  2. Clear a round patch around one photograph so that picture and its name are the only thing in the middle.
  3. Move that patch only after the pointer leaves it, so the name can be read without the wall chasing the mouse.
  4. On a click, keep that same photograph and add the place, the year, and one true sentence, plus one real next step such as Inquire.
  5. On a phone, and when a visitor has asked for less motion, drop the moving hole and show one large photograph with a still row of the rest.

What it costs

A hole that follows a pointer does nothing on a phone, because extra labels that appear on hover are not normally available on a touchscreen. Using motion to make one photo stand out also needs a still version for people who get sick from movement. Order print and the sample sentence under Russet Hour backfire on a studio site if prints are not for sale and the sentence was not written about that photograph.

Words worth knowing

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