Design Academy Eindhoven’s Graduation Show, a cornerstone of Dutch Design Week, celebrates bold creativity and innovation. Our task was to craft a visual identity and microsite that honored the show’s legacy while inviting deeper exploration—translating the energy of a physical exhibition into a dynamic digital experience.
Graphic Exploration
We began by analyzing design principles from renowned creators, distilling key insights to inform our visual language. Over two weeks, we developed original graphic assets rooted in these ideas, ensuring our work resonated with the show’s expressive spirit. This groundwork allowed us to push boundaries, creating an identity that balanced tradition with experimentation.
After extracting key design principles, we dedicated two weeks to developing our own graphic assets, deeply rooted in these foundational ideas. This process allowed us to further explore and internalize the principles, paving the way for their transformation into experimental interactions and visual designs. By building on this groundwork, we aimed to create a dynamic and innovative visual identity that not only honored the Graduation Show’s legacy but also pushed its expressive potential forward.
DIGITAL EXPLORATION
From static posters to interactive digital experiences, we expanded upon our graphic assets by designing laterally across multiple platforms. This approach led to the creation of three distinct microsites, each with varying levels of expressiveness, tailored to the Graduation Show’s diverse audience. By translating our visual identity into dynamic, interactive formats, we aimed to capture the show’s energy and innovation, offering visitors unique ways to engage with the event and its creative spirit.
Mid-expressive approach
The mid-expressive approach focused on guiding users seamlessly through a single, intuitive path, ensuring clarity and efficiency in delivering information. We used flexible grids to highlight interactions and key page elements, while scaled typography introduced contrast and balanced the visual weight within the layout. This combination created a structured yet dynamic experience, prioritizing usability without sacrificing visual impact.
Expressive approach
For the expressive approach, the focus was on crafting dynamic and engaging compositions using framing and layering techniques. By strategically placing imagery, geometric shapes, and typography along the edges of the layout, frames were created to draw attention to key focal points. Additionally, depth was built by layering elements, introducing multiple points of visual interest that brought the design to life with energy and dimension.
Highly-expressive approach
For the highly-expressive approach, the goal was to create an immersive webspace that encouraged users to explore and discover content through interactive dragging. The design focused on generating visual tension by using scaled typography and varying line lengths to achieve asymmetrical balance. A modular system with repeating elements was also implemented, fostering familiarity and enhancing user flow as visitors engaged with the space over time.
INTERACTION DESIGN
For the final direction, the interactions were designed to mirror the experience of attending the Graduation Show in person, emphasizing exploration and discovery. The goal was to recreate the sense of moving through different exhibition spaces, where users could navigate freely and uncover content in an organic, engaging way. By incorporating interactive elements like drag-and-scroll mechanics and layered visuals, the design aimed to evoke the dynamic, immersive atmosphere of the physical event, encouraging users to explore and interact with the digital space as they would at the show itself.
Dragging to explore
To recreate the feeling of exploration at the Graduation Show, pop-up windows were layered on top of each other and over text, requiring users to drag them around to reveal content in fragments. This interactive approach encourages engagement with the website as a whole, mimicking the experience of discovering and navigating through different spaces at the physical event.
Hover to reveal
When a user selects a project, hovering over the image reveals additional information about it. This design ensures that users can preview content before clicking, reducing unexpected interactions and creating a more intuitive and predictable browsing experience.
Creating unique spaces
Each Graduation Show is promoted with a unique theme every year, inspiring the design of individual microsite pages to reflect their own distinct visual identities. This approach creates a changing visual landscape that rewards users for their exploration, aligning with the sense of excitement and discovery central to the microsite’s experience.
Click to focus
Clicking on a project opens a full-screen video, eliminating distractions from the rest of the microsite. This immersive experience recreates the feeling of a main stage presentation at the Graduation Show, focusing all attention on the selected project and highlighting its significance.
Interactable timeline
An interactive timeline provides quick access to the microsite’s various pages, featuring a constant timeline bar that remains visible throughout the experience. Users can scrub through or jump to different years of the Graduation Show, enabling seamless navigation and exploration of the event’s history.
Full site walkthrough
Outcomes
This project emphasized thoughtful design and lateral thinking. By extending the visual identity across posters and digital platforms, we ensured cohesion while tailoring interactions to each medium’s strengths. The result was a celebration of the Graduation Show’s legacy—a digital space as vibrant and exploratory as the event itself.