Office 37: the site I designed for an English client

Today, I wanted to show you a project a little different from the ones I usually present here. Bureau 37 is an online library dedicated to graphic design, typography and photography.

The client is English and based in London, while I designed the site from Paris with Minuit d’Orsay.

Minuit d’Orsay now also has an address in King’s Cross, at 344–354 Gray’s Inn Road. This presence in London corresponds to the direction I want to give to the studio. Office 37 is the first English project I am presenting here, and of course I hope there will be more.

A visual library based in London

Bureau 37 brings together posters, books, record sleeves, signs, photographs, clothing and all sorts of images found over time. It is not a traditional portfolio and it is not a magazine either. The idea was to build a place where designers, students and people interested in image can look for a specific reference or, conversely, stumble upon something they weren’t looking for.

If you use platforms like Savee or if you spend time on Awwwards, You see the principle quite quickly: we come looking for images, page layout ideas, colors, or typography, and often end up much further than planned. Bureau 37 belongs to this family of image and reference banks, but with a more personal selection. It is not a feed fed by everyone or a ranking of sites. Each element is selected, filled out, and placed in a context that embodies the perspective of the person behind the collection.

When a collection contains so many different formats and subjects, the site must provide order without making the whole thing rigid. It was necessary to retain the pleasure of looking at the images while also allowing one to quickly understand where one is located. A concert poster, a graphic identity, or a street photograph do not tell the same story, but they had to be able to coexist on the same page.

Letting the images take the place

The choice of a white background took hold quite quickly. The references are already very different from each other, with lots of colors, texts, and compositions. Adding a background around it would have created noise. The homepage therefore relies on a free grid and large images. With each new visit, their order changes. You never quite find the same page again, which is very much in keeping with the way we browse a visual collection: we return, we look in a different way, and a detail that we hadn’t noticed the first time ends up coming to light.

The typography remains deliberately readable and direct. It accompanies the images, provides the necessary information, and organizes navigation without seeking to become an additional effect. I really liked the way Fraser Muggeridge talks about letters, systems and graphic references in his Domestika training. His work taught me to look at typography with greater attention, but Bureau 37 had to maintain its own logic. It wasn’t about taking over another studio’s universe: the reference helped me think, and then the project found its form based on its content.

An index to actually use the collection

The grid makes you want to explore the site, but it’s not enough when you’re looking for something specific. So I organized an index that allows you to explore the references by format, subject, graphic approach, and color. This work is less spectacular than a home page, yet it’s probably the most important part of the project. A library can be very beautiful; if no one finds anything in it, it quickly becomes cumbersome to use.

Each reference also has its own page with a large image, a short description, and the available information about its source. Authors are credited when they are identified. This accuracy was particularly important for a collection that brings together the work of many designers, artists, and photographers: Bureau 37 showcases these images but does not claim to be the author.

Design for the phone too

A large grid works well on a computer screen. On a phone, the question becomes more delicate: the images must remain large enough to be viewed, the titles must be readable, and the index cannot turn into an endless succession of filters. So I worked on the mobile version at the same time as the rest of the site, rather than processing it once the desktop version was finished. The project was then developed on WordPress so that the collection could continue to grow and new references could be added without having to rebuild the pages.

A first English project for Minuit d’Orsay

This project is very important to me because it quite simply shows how I want to develop Minuit d’Orsay: working from Paris, continuing to build projects in France, and also opening the studio in London. Remote collaboration does not change the essential. You have to ask the right questions, understand how the client will actually use their site, and build a system that they can maintain after launching it online.

For Bureau 37, I designed the site, web design, content organization, mobile version, and WordPress development. You can see the result directly on digitaldesignstudio.co.uk and find the Full project profile on Minuit d’Orsay. If you are developing a studio, a collection, a venue, or an editorial project and need a site that can organize a lot of content without erasing their personality, you can also Tell me about your project.