AMSTERDAM.- The Van Gogh Museum has dramatically redesigned its website. The website, receiving more than 8,5 million visits every year, now features more ways of inspiring people with Van Gogh’s life and work. Not only are all paintings, drawings and letters in the collection now online, visitors can even zoom in as far as the brushstrokes on the artworks, and also see which works are on display at the museum. The new ‘Vincent for scale’ functionality allows visitors to quickly see the size of a work compared to Van Gogh’s height.




What’s new?
Improved filters now make it easier to search the collection of paintings, drawings and letters, and more information about each item is now available. For example, visitors can see which paintings in the collection are currently on display at the museum. The new Vincent for scale functionality shows the size of a painting compared to the height of Vincent van Gogh, who was 1.64 metres (‎5’ 4”) tall. The new website also features short, engaging stories, reminiscent of the Stories on Instagram and Facebook. These stories use images, animations, highlighted elements of artworks (‘hotspots’) and comparisons. In addition to improved functionalities, the design of the website has been updated. Each page is now in one of the colours from a palette inspired by Vincent’s quest for colour, from dark to light.

Collaboration
The redesigned website is the result of a collaboration between tech agency Q42 (development), digital agency Dept (concept and design) and the Van Gogh Museum’s own Digital Team. In order to better cater to the needs and wishes of our online visitors, the structure and design of the website is fully tailored to browsing on both desktop and mobile devices. During development of the website, there was additional focus on accessibility for visitors with an impairment. For example, the website is optimised for screen readers, used by blind and visually-impaired visitors to browse online.

Martijn Pronk, Head of Digital Communications at the Van Gogh Museum: ‘The teams from Q42, Dept and the Van Gogh Museum have done an excellent job. They have built an ultra-modern website that will form the heart of a digital Vincent van Gogh world. With this redesigned website, we are continuing to build on the successes of recent years.’