the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
As a digital designer, beauty, functionality, and conversion are three legs all of my designs must stand on. It’s my job to create visually interesting page layouts that serve the end-user and the brand equally.
d magazine website redesign
After weeks of internal meetings to determine what a successful website redesign would look like—from both business and design perspectives—we hired a digital design firm, to draw up the final look and feel and implement the development work. We collaborated with their designer, frontend, and backend developer to develop the digital strategy and ensure our brand voice was woven through all aspects of the project.
Design/Development: Goodfolks/Emily Dawson
Frontend/Backend Development and Maintenance: Dialogs
D Magazine Homepage - Old
D Magazine Homepage - Current
Frontburner
Frontburner is the blog-style landing page on DMagazine.com where readers can find a consistent, daily conversation about the happenings in Dallas. It’s the only page on DMagazine.com with a blog feed layout, something that hasn’t changed since 2001, when it started. The editors’ love it and the FrontBurnervians are habitual readers of it.
We decided to lean into the traditional blog feed look, getting readers to stories faster, without altering the familiar interface too much. I achieved this by adding the writer’s headshot in the byline, shortening the article excerpt in the feed so the reader can wade through more stories in the same amount of time, and adding nuanced UI within the call to action, dropping the reader where they left off in the story when clicked.
Frontburner - Old
Frontburner - Current
custom drag and drop blocks
Due to an outdated CMS, forgotten plug-ins, and a lack of fresh layout designs, the old version of DMagazine.com was very limited in terms of design flexibility, making it difficult to translate an editorial package from print to online. We migrated the website to Wordpress’ Gutenburg editing system, giving us the freedom to develop layout blocks that enhance the reader experience and allow for more creative storytelling.
Expandable vertical navigation
Footnote Block - Desktop
Footnote Block - Mobile
Desktop and mobile presentation of the footnote block, activated by hover on desktop and click on mobile. This addition gave editors the opportunity to insert additional context to an article, without taking up permanent visual real estate.
78 women who make dallas great
This was the cover story for D Magazine’s September 2021 issue. It is the 78 women in industries ranging from science, to fashion, to politics, that have helped shape Dallas into the city it is today.
Videography: Rocky Nguyen
Art Direction/Production: Emily Dawson
Online layout
Image expanded view