Responses by Federico Valla.

Background: Visualbusiness is the digital home and portfolio for a casting, photography, video and production studio. By deliberately avoiding social media, the website becomes the primary platform for showcasing work—both as a booking touchpoint for clients and as an internal casting archive.

Design core: We embraced a radical approach—with images at the heart of the content, we stripped away everything non-essential to give visuals absolute prominence. The challenge of minimalism pushed us to be more inventive in how we present work: highlighting distinct moments, shifting objectives and finding fresh ways to display content that might otherwise feel repetitive.

We found our solution by experimenting with layouts and rhythm. By deliberately leaving gaps in the grid and letting images keep their native dimensions, we allowed the medium to generate the layout rather than forcing the layout onto the medium. Consequently, the site continually shifts to suit the content it presents—an effect heightened by a homepage that randomly reassembles itself each time new material is published.

Challenges: The most rewarding (and demanding) part of the project was reimagining how to present a single medium—imagery—across different contexts. The homepage offers a wide, top-down view, while the experience becomes more focused and immersive as users navigate deeper into the site, with tighter layouts and bigger images as you approach a single subject or talent.

The stripped-down concept meant development was faster than usual, which gave us room to experiment on the technical side. One of our key departures from convention was rethinking the typical WebGL preloader model. Instead of loading everything upfront, we made each WebGL-driven image behave more like a native HTML image—individually responsible for its own loading and performance.

Technology: Visualbusiness is built on a minimal yet powerful headless architecture. Content is managed through Sanity CMS, giving the client an intuitive and flexible editing experience. The front end is powered by Astro, with vanilla JavaScript and a lightweight WebGL layer delivering the interactive and visual elements.