Love Fine Art

Identity and site, 2026

Love Fine Art, Inc. advises collectors out of Manhattan, and in July 2026 the firm hired me to rebuild a site that looked understated and sat inert.

I kept everything the firm already owned and raised its preppy register into an identity true to itself through small interventions, and what shipped runs in English, Arabic, and French on the firm's own domain.

References

The mood board sets the register the firm had to stand in: Firmin Didot's own printing beside Bodoni's, two covers from 1920, a view of the Salon of 1785, and an engraved bookplate. Didot sets Vogue's pages, and through Vogue it stands for the New York art world of the eighties and nineties at its most high flying.

A mood board of reference plates, Didot and Bodoni pages, early Vogue and Vanity Fair covers, a gallery interior and an engraved monogram — Six open access plates that name the register, Didot's own printing, Bodoni, two covers from 1920, a Salon view and an engraved bookplate

The brief

The firm came to me for a total rebuild. They pointed at more contemporary, of the moment work rather than a 2010 Squarespace site, so the brief settled as lifespan, animation, and movement, with less scrolling, rolling galleries, and the firm's L.L.Bean prep left intact.

The logo

The firm already owned an architectural LFA monogram, and the only copy of it left anywhere was the 1300 pixel favicon on the old site. I traced that into three vector paths on a hundred unit grid, drawn inline so it takes the navy from the page, and its L became the operant device of the site, working as bullet, rule, and border.

The LFA monogram in navy, three interlocking geometric letters — The monogram redrawn as three vector paths, the drawing every other device on the site follows from

Selected Works

Love Fine Art, Inc. is a leading consulting firm to individual and corporate collectors, offering years of experience in the global fine art market, strict confidentiality, and personal service to each client.

Est. 1994 · New York

The L of the monogram became the bracket that rules every page, drawing out of its own corner as bullet, rule and border

Type and palette

Didot sets the display and that one choice decides most of the identity, with Helvetica Neue under it and Libre Franklin self hosted so nobody lands on Arial. The navy, 061068, I picked off the client's own favicon rather than out of a swatch book, and it stays the only brand color, one full bleed band of it per page on warm paper.

Structure

Every page opens at full height with the display type off center and the content under it itemized into ledgers, so a collector doing a credibility check can scan a page in one pass. Both gallery pages ran a static captioned grid and now run one rolling lane with every work in it, fifteen on Modern and thirty on Contemporary, nothing stranded at the bottom.

The gallery page running one rolling lane of works, built inside Squarespace — The rolling gallery running on the client's own Squarespace install, shipped through Code Injection before any rebuild existed

A rejected gallery layout, a large row above a counter rolling strip of thumbnails — The rolling gallery running on the client's own Squarespace install, shipped through Code Injection before any rebuild existed

Motion

The rolls are tactile on purpose, like a turntable: they drift on their own, take a drag at one to one, and take momentum back into the drift when you let go. The illustration library runs to thirteen austere line drawings, each one drawing itself as you scroll past it, and reduced motion gets the whole site static and fully visible.

Six plates from the illustration library, austere navy line drawings each under its own name — Six of the thirteen drawings, kept austere so nothing on the page reads as clip art

Empty picture on a wall
Canvas on an easel, verso
Plinth with sculpture
Shipping crate
Auction paddle
Conservator's loupe
Picture light
Hanging wire and hook
Stacked leaning canvases
Architectural doorway
Museum bench
12px20px32px LFA L bracket
Corner brackets

All thirteen drawings build themselves as you scroll, the only motion on the site that adds a picture rather than revealing one

The site

The Squarespace code injection was a first crack at it, and it became clear that staying on Squarespace would be worse in every way. What shipped runs twenty seven pages across three editions, written by hand, one stylesheet, and no external request of any kind.

The old Squarespace home page, a centered serif title over a seven item navigation — The site I inherited, understated and inert, the thing the brief got written against

The third build of the home page, oversized display type over warm paper — The site I inherited, understated and inert, the thing the brief got written against

The Love Fine Art home page on a desktop, oversized Didot on warm paper — The home page, where 1994 and the two galleries slide into each other from opposite directions

The Love Fine Art About page on a desktop, an itemized ledger under a full bleed navy band — The home page, where 1994 and the two galleries slide into each other from opposite directions

The mobile site

This is the mobile site. It distils everything above to the phone, the same pages and the same motion, with a centered two row lockup under 700 pixels and a full screen paper menu where script runs.

The Love Fine Art home page on a phone, the monogram centered over the navigation — The home page on a phone, the header down to a centered two row lockup

The Love Fine Art About page on a phone, the ledger stacked to one column — The home page on a phone, the header down to a centered two row lockup

Three languages

The client asked for the site again entirely in Arabic, then a French one, and a switcher at the top. Arabic runs Modern Standard right to left in Amiri and IBM Plex Sans Arabic with Arabic-Indic numerals, and the best moment on the whole site sits there, where the text crosses the monogram.

The About page in Arabic, set right to left, the text crossing the monogram — The About page in Arabic, where the text crossing the monogram makes the best moment on the site

The About page in French on a desktop — The About page in Arabic, where the text crossing the monogram makes the best moment on the site

Result

Twenty seven pages went live at lovefineartinc.com on July 23, 2026, off Squarespace and onto a static build at the firm's own domain, with the registrar left where it was and every mail record untouched. I host it now, the firm saves money every month, and it is a better site.

Live sitelovefineartinc.com