One of the key challenges in designing a portfolio site is ensuring the design of the site itself doesn’t overshadow the work it’s meant to showcase. For Schuler Shook, we centered the visual concept around the core of their craft—light and shadow. The site features an interplay of black-and-white gradients that evoke lighting design while allowing project photography to take center stage. Subtle animations and a touch of grain enhance the feeling of light in physical space.

 

With nearly 40 years of experience and hundreds of projects under their belt, a major design goal was to showcase Schuler Shook’s portfolio in a way that felt both dynamic and organized. We developed a flexible grid layout for the main project index, allowing standout projects to be featured at double size and accommodating both vertical and horizontal formats to better reflect the unique proportions of each architectural or performance space.

 

Not every project was suited for the visual thumbnail grid—some were still in progress, while others lacked proper photo documentation. For these, we created a table-style project index with a more minimal presentation that didn’t rely on imagery. This allowed Schuler Shook to maintain a comprehensive record of their full history and body of work.

 

Individual project pages are built with custom content blocks, offering editors a high degree of flexibility. These blocks support side-by-side images, text, quotes, featured statements, and external links to press coverage. The intro feature sections are also designed with adaptability in mind, accommodating a range of image aspect ratios to best showcase each project.

 

Here are a few zoomed-in views of the custom content blocks, which can be used across any page on the site to create rich, modular layouts.

 

The People section showcases the talented designers across Schuler Shook’s six locations in the United States and Australia. Each team member has a dedicated profile page featuring a bio and links to the projects they’ve contributed to, highlighting the breadth of individual expertise within the firm.