Problem & business
Individuum is a casting studio in the heart of Yerevan, casting for commercials, music videos, TV series and films, and the one client project in this portfolio. I've known the studio's founder since 2008.
It's really three businesses under one name: the casting agency, a photo and video studio for hire, and an academy with courses in acting, filmmaking and screenwriting. All three lived on an ancient Joomla site. Its most important page isn't the home page, it's the registration form: actors send in their details and photos, and the casting team needs them complete, consistent and easy to work with. In Armenian, Russian and English.
Design
Black, white and silver with a glassy finish: obsidian and pearl surfaces, a silver and steel accent scale, and light and dark themes.
The type pairs Inter with Noto Serif and Noto Sans Armenian, so Armenian headlines look designed rather than substituted, with Jost and EB Garamond for display moments. Motion stays small and local.
Engineering
Next.js and Payload CMS on Neon Postgres, with files in Vercel Blob and translations through next-intl.
Registration is where most of the engineering went. Photos upload straight from the browser to storage, so the form stays quick on a phone, and bot protection keeps spam out. Each registration then runs through a background workflow that processes the photos, writes a summary and packs everything into one archive for the casting team. Nightly jobs run that queue and clear abandoned uploads.
Outcome
The studio left Joomla for a modern stack where every page, from casting news to academy courses, is editable in a proper CMS in three languages, and every registration reaches the casting team as one clean, ready-to-use package. I made the whole site, design included.
