Dutch Design Week
Streamlining the pre-event planning journey of Dutch Design Week through a functional microsite.
Overview
01
In this five-week academic project, the goal was to create a microsite for Dutch Design Week, a renowned annual festival attracting visitors globally with over 600 events. The project involved graphic experimentation, leading to the development of interactive features and prototypes. I conducted research on the festival, participated in the graphic design process, and assisted in the design of the site's content.
Disclaimer: This project has no official affiliation with Dutch Design Week. It was conducted as a case study for an academic project.
Role
Content Design, UX Design, Research
Team
Christina Raganit, Michael Dresler, Brianna Mei, Medeline Ho
Figma, After Effects, Photoshop
Tools
Duration
5 Weeks (Spring 2023)
Microsite Design
02
Our final microsite serves as an advanced pre-planner, enabling visitors to effortlessly map out their festival itinerary beforehand.
In the final two weeks of the project, we developed a solution that lets users conveniently plan their schedules in advance. The site begins with a comprehensive overview of available resources, providing detailed information about the festival's exhibitions. It then offers visitors the chance to meticulously plan their journey and purchase tickets for events they're interested in.
Microsite Walkthrough
Content Strategy
03
My research on Dutch Design Week revealed a key shortfall in their website: insufficient information for new visitors to make informed decisions about attending specific exhibitions. Despite its popularity with regular attendees, this gap made the festival less accessible to first-time visitors.
This led us to enhance our microsite with additional content and visual context about specific exhibitions, making it easier for newcomers to decide on their attendance.
We designed the microsite to feature exhibitions with existing images, providing new visitors with clearer context. This approach was informed by my research, which revealed that many upcoming exhibitions lacked sufficient visual information. To address this, I personally selected content for each page, sourcing images from artists' and speakers' websites that could effectively preview future exhibitions.
Curating Content
Exhibition page featuring a selection of curated images.
Art Direction Process
04
Our final interaction design emerged from graphic experimentation, guided by design principles and qualities derived from the works of designers Ellen Lupton and Massimo Vignelli.
To go beyond the surface, we merged various design principles and qualities, leading to the creation of a diverse range of posters. These then served as starting points for further iterations.
One such example is Poster 4, which I created. In it, elements within the frame were cropped to imply scale and overlapping layers were used to create an illusion of volume.
The second poster was our definitive design approach.
Diverging to Converging
Posters created as a result of our design process.
Prior to transitioning into digital interactions, we evaluated the effectiveness of our design language beyond the constraints of posters through the creation of various graphic assets.
In the early stages of creating graphic assets, I applied Ellen Lupton's principles, such as scaling elements beyond the frame for visual impact and using texture to add depth. This process revealed that our design language was predominantly image-driven. Consequently, I focused on using bold, striking images that could effectively complement the scaled text.
Evaluation of Art Direction
Initial graphic assets that proved to be ineffective.
I contributed to the final graphic assets, strategically placed at Eindhoven's key landmarks to assess our visual identity's impact and branding effectiveness.
Graphic asset for the Dutch Railway System.
Graphic asset in “Eindhoven Centraal” station.
Graphic asset in Eindhoven Square on the bike tunnel entrance.
I selected, edited, and enhanced images for the microsite, applying a halftone treatment to add textural depth, set against bold, solid backgrounds. Color overlays matched the text boxes' hues, reinforcing each page's unique identity.
The halftone effect, combined with a monochrome color palette and image superimposition, creates a compelling depth and an interesting interplay between text, image, and background.
The use of bright, vibrant colors, a nod to the boldness of Dutch design, grabs attention at first glance and seamlessly blends with the site's semantic themes due to its high saturation.
Image Treatment
Example of how the image treatment was applied to the microsite.
Microsite Interactions
05
The initial explorations into interactions served as the foundation for our eventual interaction principles. While implementing our visual styling, we explored several interactions, animation and navigation which resulted in our final interactions.
A dynamic card system that reveals and collapses information in synchrony with the user’s scrolling.
Visual intrigue on the home page is achieved with a dynamic title that rotates, changes positions and sizes within a modular structure.
An intuitive and elegant user interaction is established by a change in color when the user hovers over a title
An illusion of depth is established by displaying images both behind and in front of the heading. The horizontal carousel establishes the perception that the images exist in a larger realm, beyond the confines of the frame.
Reflection
06
One of the key takeaways we learned from this project was the value of the principle, 'Don’t Design in Your Head.' We discovered that materializing our thoughts into physical forms greatly enhanced both our communication and ideation processes. This experience reaffirmed the effectiveness of visualizing and hands-on designing in transforming abstract ideas into concrete solutions.
I learned the importance of teamwork and the necessity of tackling even mundane tasks with diligence, recognizing that enthusiasm isn't always a prerequisite for task completion. Additionally, I discovered the critical role of leadership in task delegation and management, essential for achieving project goals within tight deadlines.
If given the opportunity to revisit the project, I would try to gain a deeper understanding of the event, which would inform more effective design choices. Exploring a variety of micro-interactions and page layouts would be a priority to enhance the overall cohesiveness of the microsite. Unfortunately, due to stringent deadlines, our team was limited in our capacity to experiment as extensively as we would have liked.