Meridian Motion Study
Designing a portfolio-forward agency site around how work gets shown, not just described.
Context and constraints
Most agency and studio sites default to About / Services / Contact — a structure built around the studio, not the work. We set an internal brief to design a site where the CMS structure itself insists on showing work: Work and Journal as first-class content types, not an afterthought gallery bolted onto a generic template. No client, no external launch date — the constraint was architectural: the structure had to make it hard to ship a boring agency site, not just possible to make an interesting one.
Decisions
01
Structure before layout.
The CMS collections (case studies, journal entries) were defined before any page was designed, so the template can’t collapse back into a generic five-page site.
02
Motion as wayfinding, not decoration.
Transitions and reveals were scoped to help a visitor track where they are inside a case study, not as ambient polish.
03
Nine pages, deliberately.
Enough structure for a small studio to look considered, not so much that editing the site becomes a maintenance burden.
Artifacts
Sitemap diagram
Case-study template anatomy
Motion timing sheet