Project Overview

Cheryl E. Leonard is a San Francisco-based composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder whose works investigate sounds, structures, and objects from the natural world. Her projects cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers, and bones as musical instruments, and often feature one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments and field recordings from remote locales.

The website is meant to promote her unique instruments, recordings and events.

Design Philosophy

The key to this website’s design is to elegantly present Cheryl’s work and remain mobile-friendly. I also had ensure consistency in the quality of the photos, and develop an administrative interface to make it easy for Cheryl to update the site and add events, which is pretty common for this very busy musician/artist.

Key Features

Instruments

• Multiple galleries associated with specific recording or concerts
• Modal galleries, so the focus stays on a specific instrument or group of instruments
• Easily navigable main page with chronological groupings

Events & Recordings

• Backend admin UI that is form-based for easy no-code event updates
• Automatic categorization of upcoming and past events
• Recording fields in admin form add automated links to off site distribution platforms

Selected Works and Bio

• Concerts and works data going back 30 years
• Image column that interweaves with text data on mobile
• Easy updates by the artist

Tech Stack

• Wordpress
• Elementor
• Toolset
• Liquid Web hosting
• AWS CDN

Impact & Recognition

Cheryl has been using the site for 5 years at this point, and I have not heard of any issues or complaints! Her audience finds the site usable and easy to navigate.