The Challenge:

DDW's program spans speculative and social design, work that's abstract, future-facing, and meant to provoke rather than explain. A conventional event site, built around text and straightforward navigation, would undercut the very ideas the exhibitions were exploring. The site needed to feel like an extension of speculative design itself, something designers would want to question and engage with, not just scroll through.

Approach:

I grounded the art direction in bold, provocative imagery in place of text, an asymmetrical loose grid for a more dynamic and expressive layout, and line as the connective language between exhibitions and content. Images did the work text normally would, inviting questions rather than answering them, in line with speculative design's own logic.

Solution:

That system carried through every interaction on the site. Abstracted imagery replaced conventional navigation entirely, clusters of related images group together as users filter, acting as a unique form of content gallery rather than a menu. A custom cursor and growing grid lines signal what's interactive, keeping the loose, asymmetric grid legible without ever feeling static. Content reveals progressively as users scroll, rather than loading all at once, so the site itself stays in the spirit of speculative design: curiosity first, answers second.