A website for an exhibition celebrating Indigenous Australians and their connection to native flora and fauna.
Old Quad is a gallery at the University of Melbourne. They partnered with Sandpit to create a digital companion to the Emu Sky exhibition, which explored Indigenous land management and the enduring relationship Aboriginal Australians have with native flora and fauna. The brief called for something clean and fast, with a visual language that extended the feeling of the physical exhibition into the browser.
What needed to be built:
The site needed to do more than document an exhibition. It needed to carry those stories forward.
This project was completed as part of my work with Sandpit.
I designed the UI for the site, with developer Cameron James at Sandpit bringing it to life. The visual direction carried through smoke transitions between sections, a quiet nod to the exhibition's themes of land, fire, and connection to country.
The site is structured around the works themselves, with a gallery section and a Further Learning area designed to be updated over time with events, stories, and resources. The intention was always that this would be a living site, not a static archive.
Accessibility
At the time of build, the site included a custom-developed accessibility toolbar that let visitors adjust font style, text size, and display contrast.
This was well-intentioned, but it is worth being transparent: this approach is now considered problematic.
Overlays and toolbars, even custom ones, can interfere with the assistive technology a visitor is already using. They are often a surface-level fix that sits on top of deeper accessibility issues in the code. True accessibility has to be built into the foundations of a site. This project is a good example of why the field moves quickly, and why ongoing accessibility expertise matters more than a one-time solution.
Sensitivity
The exhibition includes images and records relating to deceased Indigenous Australians. Content warnings were incorporated into the site to notify Indigenous visitors before they encountered this material. This is a necessary step when working with communities for whom images of deceased relatives can cause genuine distress.
The Emu Sky website gave an important cultural exhibition a life beyond its physical walls. Designed for speed, built with care, and structured to keep growing, it created a permanent space for Indigenous stories, land knowledge, and community resources that anyone could access.
Cultural organisations and institutions have stories worth keeping. Whether you need a website that respects the communities you work with or a brand that reflects your values, let's make sure the work you do gets the reach it deserves.
