Web design for a news site about street art
Street Art News is a hub where one can find the latest news about street art, graffiti, and the artists who created them. A place to find inspiration, learn about murals, and buy art.
About
StreetArtNews is the ultimate source of the latest news from the world of graffiti and street art and the artists behind it all. It also offers to buy artworks in the form of screen printing or using other materials. In a wider sense, it explores what lies beyond the murals themselves and how art impacts our lives.
Mission
At first, it was a passion project that one day grew out of a simple DIY website. That’s why it was in dire need of an expert revamp, with a groundbreaking vision on the whole structure and content delivery. Our mission was to deliver that vision in web design. Those who are into street art could see the cultural references, while people who are just dipping their toes into this field could finally dive in.
Design team goals
- Offer a stunning visual experience that empowers artistic effects
- Create a design that prepares readers for different kinds of content
- Revamp the old structure and brush the dust off the navigation
- Find ways to showcase the arts in the best way possible
Technologies
To revamp the website, we mostly relied on WordPress. It’s highly customizable, flexible, scalable, and, what’s more important, cost-effective. With a wide range of libraries and templates, we were able to deliver the exact look the Street Art News creator expected.
Apart from WordPress, the team also took advantage of React, Next.js, and TypeScript. This tech stack offers that much-needed performance and reliability. What’s more, it’s SEO-friendly, so we were able to leverage automatic routing and dynamic meta tags for the news section.
The process
We started with a thorough research to find the drawbacks of the website and the best ways to fix them. The next step was to redesign the existing structure and make it easy to navigate. At the same time, the new website looks should complement the art pieces.
Old design
The previous layout resembled a blog page, where it was difficult to admire art because of the small amount of white space around the pieces. No art could stand out and impress the readers.
Moodboard
We took inspiration from news portals, art websites, and even old newspapers. The main goal was to find the entwinement between street art and people’s lives, highlight stories, show faces behind murals, and integrate large photos.
UI/UX design
After analysing all the references, we took a risky step and built a unique structure with a specific layout. The same went for navigation—the team abandoned common elements. And that step paid off.
Home page
The primary element of the layout here is art. As the main goal was to highlight the murals, we placed them at the head of our website design.
Regular articles
One of the main traits of the upcoming social feed design was the user’s ability to scan through the posts’ most visible and significant parts, the heading and the image and get a sense of what the post is about. Unlike most social feeds where the posts are using emojis to bait readers, we wanted to level it out and provide “stock” options to choose from.
Video player
The website design should have lots of video content, and we created StreetArt TV as an outlet for it. There was one of the unique design decisions: the video base was colored, and the dominating color from the featured art was taken as that base. So, the mural was always corresponding to the color scheme of the video.
Categories
There were thousands of articles, and people needed an easy way to navigate around. That’s why we created relevant categories for various art topics.
Other pages
The team picked a creative approach for technical pages like 404 or contacts. Each of them is unique and easy to remember.
Mobile version
Smartphones have smaller screens. So we had to transform the layout during the website redesign. It has a different grid, visual architecture, and balance of white space. Still, the site is easily recognizable and accessible, with high readability.
Outcome
Street Art News got a unique website design that reflects its brand philosophy and a thoughtful approach to murals. It has become a great place to browse art, seek inspiration, and stay up-to-date with the latest art news. With the new look, the website has great potential to attract more users, increasing the murals' popularity. As a design agency, we admired the way Street Art News combines data and aesthetics—a challenge not every company can nail.
Customer testimonial
This was a challenge we threw out to ourselves. There were voices telling us to keep it simple, not go past the usual blog layouts. We didn't listen and now, 5 years later, the design still slaps.Moses KimCreative Producer
