MONTREAL—Design studio L'Abricot recently unveiled a new website it designed for its client, Éditions de Ta Mère, a small French-language literary press. The design of the website has a few unconventional features.


Abricot wanted the website to reflect the unique, bold identity of the publishing house, says Julien Boisseau, artistic director and lead designer on the project. "We also wanted to play with the conventions of the Web." To that end, the logo and main navigation bar is fixed in position on the top third of the screen. On the site's secondary pages, text and images scroll behind the nameplate. The dress of the "mother" icon used in the logo is transparent, allowing images and text to peek through. The font used throughout is Trade Gothic. Jean-François Labbé did the coding.

Boisseau was able to use a series of silk-screen print portraits of the publishing house's authors  made by Ta Mère artistic director Benoît Tardif. Boisseau scanned the portraits and used them on the site's Author pages.