Matthew and I started working together well before I had started Headlight and before he had really ramped up his architecture practice, Overhead. Our collaboration began, instead, with images - photographs that he had taken in upstate New York, and that I had taken in the city before moving to Los Angeles. Somehow we felt the sensibilities in our images spoke to one another and, despite neither of us considering ourselves photographers, decided to make a book of them together. I remember Matthew being attracted to the layered effects of light and shadow in images shot through glass windows or dappled canopies of trees.

When Matthew approached me about making a website for Overhead we had already established a working method in our book project, and it seemed logical to incorporate that approach into the website design and development process. Largely, as in our book, we used the images that were present as an entry point: across documentation, renderings, and drawings for completed and active projects alike. A decision to show in-progress images, not only polished post-completion imagery, guided the tone of the website design. I introduced a restrained typography approach which utilized bold and regular weights, along with subtle hover effects over images that reference the blurry edges that Matthew was so fond of in the book we made together.

Overhead is a firm that is particularly interested in what is at-hand: the preexisting and immediate realities of construction and building. I wanted to translate this interest into the building of the website, too, and considered how the materials of the website also deserved this kind of sensitivity. Taking a cue from Matthew’s subtle tastes, I decided to develop a simple content architecture which emphasized the projects themselves, and the reality of relationships between them. The design flowed from this technical approach, showcasing related projects on project pages, and displaying project data in a simple typography.

This website was intended to act as a subtle expression of Overhead’s sensibility on the web - not only to showcase projects, but also showcase the images that Matthew enthusiastically captures on job sites and his travels. As the realities of growth and the complexities of working in the world have demanded more of Overhead, this site has stayed consistent as a place for their output to be showcased and the feeling of their practice to persist.

Matthew Ransom, Founding Director, Overhead Architecture

Working with Taylor was such a pleasure. He quickly understood our growing organization's values, and the challenge of sharing our work in a format that is both accessible and easy to maintain as we grow. Leveraging his design sensibility and deep technical expertise, Taylor crafted a website well-suited for how we want to present our organization to the world, and a plan for how to adapt the site for our evolving needs. Taylor was an invaluable thought partner in considering the trajectory of our business, and it was very gratifying to collaborate with someone who really understood our work. The website he designed conveys the work in a clear and maintainable format - and we love the way it looks. Taylor himself was very easy to work with, and his enthusiasm for the project was really energizing for everyone involved.