Painter's Portfolio · Artist Website
Kim Hanyoung Studio
We planned, designed, and built the portfolio site for Kim Hanyoung, a contemporary oil painter — presenting artworks, exhibitions, and biography in an image-led, minimal gallery, available in Korean, English, French, and Japanese.
Overview
Kim Hanyoung is a contemporary artist who works in pure oils, capturing the organic textures of nature — landscapes and the 'light of twilight' — on canvas.
We built the site as an online gallery and portfolio that brings the artist's works, exhibition history, and biography together in one place.
We designed a minimal, whitespace-driven gallery layout on a neutral background so the artworks themselves take center stage.
It supports four languages — Korean, English, French, and Japanese — for international visitors and collectors.
On this project, Silmaril was responsible for the portfolio site build.
Role & Contributions
- Planned, designed, and built the artist portfolio site — information architecture for Work, Exhibitions, About (biography & studio), and Information (news & contact)
- Designed an image-led, minimal gallery UI that lets the artworks shine
- Built a four-language site (Korean, English, French, Japanese) with i18n
- Laid out artwork details — title, year, dimensions, medium — consistently
- Applied image optimization and responsive layouts to serve high-resolution artworks fast
- Built and deployed the site on Next.js (App Router)
- Implemented the full SEO stack — multilingual architecture (per-language URLs, hreflang/canonical), JSON-LD structured data, and automated image/OG optimization
Key Sections
Work
A gallery to view the artist's works through large, image-led layouts.
Exhibitions
Key exhibition history that traces the artist's activity.
About
The artist's statement, biography, and studio.
Information
News and contact in one place.
Four Languages
Korean, English, French, and Japanese welcome visitors worldwide.
Image-Led Minimal Design
A neutral background and whitespace create a gallery atmosphere where the work stands out.
Challenges & Solutions
Letting the Work Take Center Stage
- Situation
- In an artist portfolio, the work — not the UI — has to be the star.
- Task
- Achieve gallery-grade polish without the design getting in the way of the art.
- Action
- We designed a neutral background, large imagery, restrained typography, and whitespace-led layouts to draw the eye to the work.
- Result
- Delivered a gallery-like portfolio where the artwork is the star of the screen.
Performance for High-Resolution Art
- Situation
- Paintings need high-resolution images to convey their texture, but using them as-is slows loading.
- Task
- Build a site that keeps image quality while opening fast.
- Action
- We used Next.js image optimization and responsive images to serve sizes matched to the screen and device.
- Result
- Implemented a gallery that preserves detail while staying fast to browse.
Four-Language Global Reach
- Situation
- The artist's international activity called for works and biography in multiple languages.
- Task
- Keep content and layout consistent across all four languages.
- Action
- We structured Korean, English, French, and Japanese on an i18n foundation with language switching.
- Result
- Built a site where visitors and collectors abroad can explore the work in their own language.
SEO Implementation
Multilingual SEO Architecture
We migrated from cookie-based single-URL i18n to per-language URL routing (/ko · /en · /fr · /ja, default en). Middleware auto-detects the locale (cookie → Accept-Language) and 308-redirects, while bypassing /admin, /api, and static files and preserving the session cookie.
Canonical & hreflang
Every public page emits a self-referencing canonical plus four-language and x-default (→ /en) alternates. The same hreflang set is output in both <head> and sitemap.xml, and the domain is normalized to non-www — preventing duplicate indexing.
Structured Data (JSON-LD)
Person (a single entity sharing one @id across all languages — birth year, birthplace, Hongik alumniOf, knowsAbout, sameAs), WebSite (SearchAction), VisualArtwork for works, ExhibitionEvent/CreativeWork for shows, BreadcrumbList, and CollectionPage + ItemList for listings.
Per-Item URLs for Works & Exhibitions
Each work and exhibition has its own URL (/{locale}/artworks/{slug}) and is indexed individually. Slugs are generated as {title}-{first 8 of UUID} with no DB schema change, and each detail page's OG image is the artwork itself.
Admin Add → Auto-Indexing
When an admin adds a work, the detail page is created instantly and reflected in the sitemap within an hour — no redeploy needed.
Image SEO — Auto Multilingual Alt
A simple upload auto-generates locale-specific, keyword-rich alt text (e.g., 'Oil on Canvas by painter Hanyoung Kim'). This avoids empty or identical-across-languages alt that wastes hreflang signals, secures per-language image-search signals, and registers an image sitemap.
Dynamic OG / Twitter Cards
Per-language 1200×630 OG images are generated at build time (next/og) using system fonts only — no remote font fetch — so builds stay safe offline or in a sandbox. summary_large_image cards carry per-language taglines.
Crawl Control & Sitemap
robots explicitly allows Naver Yeti and Daum Daumoa (for Korean search engines) and blocks /admin and /api. The sitemap uses ISR (hourly), derives lastmod from the latest updated_at in the DB with graceful degradation, and the admin area is noindex.
Performance, Ops & Keywords
ISR static rendering plus priority LCP images improve Core Web Vitals, with googleBot max-image-preview:large and max-snippet:-1. It ships a PWA manifest, per-language RSS, search-engine verification (GSC, Naver), and production-only GA4, and targets a 'painting-focused Western painter' positioning with high-intent Korean keywords.
Tech Stack
Impact
- Completed an online gallery and portfolio that brings the artist's body of work and exhibition history together in one place.
- Reaches international visitors and collectors across four languages — Korean, English, French, and Japanese.
- A minimal, fast site that makes the artwork stand out and conveys the artist's brand consistently online.
- Applied SEO — per-language URLs, hreflang, JSON-LD, and image SEO — so all four languages index independently and each work and exhibition surfaces at its own URL.
- On this engagement, Silmaril's scope was the portfolio site build.