My friend Alex Hansen, a professional mountain athlete and photographer, contracted me to create a mark for his brand, and to design and build a porfolio website to showcase his work.
Alex is a very unique person, with conviction and drive unlike anyone I've ever met in my life. He has a special sense of purpose, the most admirable work ethic, the friendliest vibes, and a contagiously deep level of respect for nature, humanity, the importance of discipline and kindness, and pushing one's own boundaries in the pursuit of self-growth.
Alex travels the world to climb, but he has a special love for the wilderness of Alaska in particular. His love for this region and the people he's become close to there actually inspired him to start his own non-profit, the Alaska Wilderness Project.
Together, the mark that we created is a combination of three ideas - an upward hand reaching for the next climbing hold, a nod to native Alaskan art styles in deep respect of the close partnerships he's forged through his non-profit, and a nod to the pattern in which glacial waters split and branch off as they move from their frozen state of matter into the flowing tendrils of a river delta. As a bonus, we both liked how the hand flowing into a delta reminded us of the visual similarities between Earth's river deltas and the structure of the human vascular system.
We chose thick strokes in order to ensure it stays recognizable at large and small scales since he expressed intent to use it not only as a mark on documents, his website, and merch, but also as a stamp on his photography prints.
Alex needed an updated portfolio site that allowed him to show off his fresh new look while also including some more robust features like blog management. In addition, he also needed to include special sections to highlight his commercial photography work for both his sponsors as well as his own personal work.
We chose Webflow as our build tool and CMS for these needs, since it allows for more freedom with custom design features than other services do, and because it has a powerful CMS baked in for his other needs. This choice helped to remove friction on the design and build side, since I was able to add some bells and whistles like animations, custom cursors, and control over breakpoints that other services don't offer without getting a seasoned dev involved.
