Planning the physical layout of your exhibition is a crucial part of creating a compelling visitor experience. Crafted Call allows you to organize your gallery spaces, define walls, and strategically place artworks using a digital canvas that mirrors your actual physical space.
Understanding Gallery Spaces and Walls
A gallery space represents a room or distinct area in your exhibition venue. Within each space, you can define multiple walls to organize how artworks are displayed. This hierarchical structure helps you plan realistic layouts and communicate positioning clearly to artists, installers, and team members.
When creating a new gallery space, you'll specify:
The space name (e.g., "Main Hall," "Corridor Gallery," "VIP Room")
Physical dimensions if applicable
A description of the space's characteristics
Once a space exists, you can add walls within it. Each wall represents a distinct display surface where artworks will be positioned.
Placing Artworks on Walls
Crafted Call's wall placement feature uses a coordinate system to position artworks precisely. When you select a wall, you'll see a digital representation where you can drag and drop artworks to specific locations.
Visualize spacing between pieces before installation
Set artwork dimensions to maintain accurate representation
Adjust heights to reflect actual wall positions (floor, eye level, upper wall)
This digital layout becomes a reference guide for physical installation, helping installers understand exactly where each piece should hang.
Tip: Take measurements of your actual gallery walls before creating your digital layout. Knowing wall widths and optimal height ranges will make your digital plan more useful for physical installation.
Managing Artwork Positions
As your exhibition evolves, you may need to adjust artwork positions. Crafted Call allows you to:
Move artworks between walls within the same space
Adjust coordinates to fine-tune positioning
Remove artworks and leave space for future pieces
Duplicate successful layout patterns across similar walls
When you make position changes, the system tracks these updates and can notify relevant team members about installation changes.
Planning Your Physical Layout Digitally
Before your exhibition opens, use the wall placement feature to:
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Optimize visitor flow: Plan artwork positions to guide visitors naturally through the space and control how they experience the exhibition narrative.
Ensure accessibility: Position artworks at varied heights and distances from walls to accommodate visitors of all abilities.
Balance visual weight: Distribute larger, more visually prominent pieces across walls to create harmony and prevent any single area from feeling overcrowded.
Create focal points: Designate key walls or positions for your most impactful or featured artworks.
Account for practical constraints: Position pieces away from doors, light sources, or areas prone to foot traffic that could damage them.
Communicating Layout with Your Team
The digital layout serves multiple purposes:
Installation teams use it as a blueprint for hanging artworks
Marketing can reference it when creating exhibition descriptions
Curators can evaluate the overall exhibition flow and make adjustments
Visitors (in virtual exhibition mode) see artworks in their intended spatial relationships
Export or share your layout with stakeholders to ensure everyone understands the exhibition structure before installation begins.
Best practice: Finalize your wall layout at least two weeks before your opening. This gives installers time to prepare and allows for any last-minute adjustments to accommodate logistical challenges.
Sharing a Layout Outside Your Team
When you create a share link for a layout, you choose exactly what the recipient can see. Each link carries its own settings, so you can share the same plan two different ways:
What's shown — whether the viewer sees artist identities, curatorial or installation notes, and measurements, and whether they can view the 2D plan, the 3D walkthrough, or both.
Who can open it — you can require a sign-in and/or set an access code. The access code is stored securely (never in plain text), and the link can be given an expiration date.
Downloads — off by default; enable it only when the recipient needs a copy.
A shared link never exposes your original floor-plan file or any private source image — recipients only ever see the finished, policy-scoped plan. You can revoke any link at any time; once revoked it stops working immediately, and an expired or revoked link renders nothing.
Working from a Juror's Suggestion
If a juror has built a private spatial suggestion for the show, you can copy it into a new draft to work from. Cloning creates a fresh draft that starts from the juror's arrangement; it never activates that suggestion, and your official plan is untouched until you choose to apply changes. The juror's original suggestion stays exactly as they left it — private to them.
Troubleshooting Common Layout Issues
Overlapping artworks: If pieces visually overlap in your digital plan, adjust the spacing or consider moving one artwork to an adjacent wall.
Unbalanced spacing: Use the coordinate grid to ensure consistent spacing between artworks on the same wall.
Dimension mismatches: If an artwork appears too large or small relative to your wall, verify the artwork's recorded dimensions match reality.
By carefully planning your gallery layout in Crafted Call, you create a blueprint that ensures professional installation, optimal visitor experience, and effective use of your physical exhibition space.
