Choosing a gallery

Five ways to arrange a collection. Picking the right one matters more than tuning the one you picked.

Decision order

1. Volume and mixed heights → Masonry Gallery
2. Expressive, personal, editorial → Polaroid Wall
3. A small set that should unpack from one place → Stack to Grid
4. A hand of a few options → Card Fan
5. One at a time, reviewed and dismissed → Draggable Card Stack

In one line each

• Masonry Gallery — content density and mixed ratios. No motion of its own, which is what makes it safe at a hundred items.
• Polaroid Wall — expressive, editorial presentation. Six to twenty-four photos that should feel pinned rather than placed.
• Stack to Grid — reveals that a small collection has more inside it.
• Card Fan — a few options presented as a hand; overlap is the point.
• Draggable Card Stack — sequential review, where dismissal is the action.

The question that settles most cases

*Is the arrangement carrying meaning, or is it carrying volume?*

Meaning — a curated set, a story, a personality — justifies an expressive layout. Volume does not: at scale, arrangement should get out of the way and let the content be the interest.

Common mistakes

• Reaching for Polaroid Wall on a product grid. Rotation destroys the comparability that a product grid exists for.
• Using Card Fan for content people need to read. Overlap hides text.
• Putting a heavy card component inside a large gallery. See image-heavy-performance.