The main goal of this website is to highlight the invaluable contribution of HowlRound's community and entice more theater makers to join its commons. We focused a lot of energy towards creating an experienced that engaged users within the individual pieces of content and even compel users to pitch their own content ideas to the HowlRound team.
One of HowlRound's main gripes with their former website was that users were unable to find content without using the search bar. Even then the search results were hard to parse through. Our approach to the information architecture was to put the subject matter front and center. We argued that users were more interested in the substance of the content rather than the method of consumption.
We created a two tier menu system: one menu is generated entirely by the user's -most read article, content most commented on, and most viewed video, and the other menu is curated by the HowlRound editors.
Since HowlRound's content focuses attention on marginalized groups and ideas I wanted the visual design to feel "off". I wanted users to feel like something is wrong only to be offered ways to soothe their feeling of unrest (aka. by participating in the commons). I created this by leaning the site heavily towards the right side of the page, a slight nod to the way the logo is designed.
The discourse on this site touches on many cultural ideas so I used lots of angles and heavy use of black and white to visually highlight the important, opinionated nature of the content. And much of the visual emphasis is on the content authors to highlight the commons nature of the site.
