Olympia Gallery offers a virtual alternative to physical exhibitions.

Visitors can navigate curated work, engage with new and exciting projects, link to the people behind them, visit the gallery's bookstore and connect with selected partners.

Click here to visit.

While working on the exhibition design for Graphic Design Festival Scotland's International Poster Competition which led to the creation of Olympia Gallery we asked:

• What role can digital experiences play in addressing issues around accessibility?
• What role does physicality play in how we participate in events or festivals?
• What are the values and shortfalls of representing something digitally?
• Do you need a physical space to build a community?
• Can we address challenges of accessibility digitally?
• Does a poster have to be printed to be defined as a poster?

• Celebrate the creativity and diversity of work being created within the field of poster design
• Offer an opportunity for the work to be appreciated in a new context
• Encourage visitors to discover the artists and designers behind the work
• Welcome as many visitors as possible to the exhibition

For an event with a global audience across more than one hundred countries attending a physical exhibition comes with a number of challenges: physical location, personal mobility, transport links, financial restraints, geographical borders.

We developed the concept and designed the gallery in 3D modelling software and our long-term web partners, Infinite Eye brought their web expertise to help create the interactive experience so everyone could visit the gallery on their desktops and mobiles.

Olympia holds the key to allowing anybody anywhere in the world to visit exhibitions and engage with creative work or artefacts within a gallery setting.

Visitors can navigate the gallery and explore the exhibited items from anywhere in the world at any time via computer, mobile or tablet without the barriers of physical location, personal mobility, opening times, entry fee, room capacity, peak times, etc.

Another strength of Olympia is that gallery spaces can be customised and built around the work as opposed to fitting the work around the gallery.

Olympia Gallery’s identity is inspired by the idea of the white cube as both a physical space and an abstract concept: a bright minimalist, neutral frame. Skeletal lines, airiness and unwavering pretentiousness.

The typeface used is Times Now, designed by Jan Henrik Arnold as a companion to classical Times New Roman. Jan says of the typeface: "Now you can let your text play its melody on a neobaroque organ in all ranges fine tuning from silent to loud and all nuances in between to complete your harmony."

The tone of communication is set to develop but at the moment the gallery communicates publicly in a detached, matter of fact manner, partly mocking the standoffish illusion of prestige associated with elitism and art galleries.