Oliver Harris

Client: Oliver Harris is a British academic, author and Emeritus Professor of American Literature at Keele University. He is also one of the leading scholars of the Beat writings 

Service: Website design, website development, SEO and performance optimisation

Result: A website dedicated to Oliver Harris’s extensive collection of written works, academic papers, journals and interviews

Oliver Harris is the author and editor of eighteen books, including a dozen editions of works by William S. Burroughs. He is Emeritus Professor of American Literature and the president of the European Beat Studies Network. 

To create a website that was part biography of Oliver’s life and a showcase of his written work, particularly his academic and editorial projects concerning the Beat generation.

Not so much a problem per se, but Oliver wanted a dedicated website distinct from his other public roles. He has been the president of the EBSN (European Beat Studies Network) since its establishment in 2010, and he is Emeritus Professor at Keele University. While Oliver had profiles on both of these sites, they left little room for Oliver to project his own voice. He wanted a separate website dedicated to his own writings and a place to express his passion for film and literature and its impact on his own life and work.

Oliver’s love for the film noir aesthetic gave us a clear route forward. After he laid out what he wanted, it felt natural to seek inspiration from Film Noir’s classic motifs: the forbidding shadows and silhouettes, smoky rain-drenched alleyways, blinking neon lights, all the elements reminiscent of the detective films of the 1950s.

We were given the Burt Lancaster movie, “The Killers”, as the foundation to work from. Oliver insisted we use an adaptation of an iconic still from the movie in the hero section. We used this image as the tonal indicator for the whole website.

After some hunting, we found the perfect typeface, “Poiret One”, a beautiful Art Deco font that captured the era’s signature marquee billboards and posters seen in countless film noirs.

Much of the layout was inspired, again, by the Art Deco style. Throughout the website, we used thin white boxes with flowering corners to frame every book cover, article and journal snippet. We also used lots of grainy film overlays to recreate the classic “hair-in-the-gate” feel of old celluloid film.

Sections were organised for maximum ease of use. Images, PDFs and articles were kept small and light to preserve performance and speed, and sections were intuitively linked for seamless navigation. 

A highly evocative and “Gatsbyesque” website where visitors feel like they’ve stepped into an Orson Welles movie. It is a virtual library outside of time, swathed in shadow and mist. Each page is a secret nook stuffed with treasures: books, collected articles, notes, reviews and interviews. Photographs appear as they would in a scrapbook: frayed, faded and slightly torn. It feels like a website from the past, a relic from the silent age. It’s certainly one of our favourite projects, and Oliver was overjoyed by the results.