Span was commissioned to design an online curatorial platform for all the facets of MAS Context, including presenting over a decade of publications within a state-of-the-art modern archive. Built on the Craft CMS, the site focuses on presenting the content driven by editorial decisions, allowing the organization to tailor each presentation to the narrative.
In celebration of this new archive, Span was also invited to design a new identity for the organization. The new mark is influenced by the seminal De Stijl movement of the early 1910s, integrating a visible structure into the letterforms that evolves from the previous version designed during the Thirst days.
Built on the Craft CMS platform, the new platform is designed to be responsive, flexible, and typographically rich for multiple forms of editorial content from long-form essays with citations to audio interviews and photo essays. The site has seamless transitions between pages using the Barba.js framework as well as custom javascript.
The reading experience for long-form content such as articles and observations is the emphasis of the platform, making the experience easy on any device.
Logomark
Inspiration from publications from the De Stijl movement (Original design by Theo van Doesburg (left) and Vilmos Huszár c. 1917–1931)
The pop-out navigation expands as needed to highlight live search results or provide structure within a current issue, always directing visitors to new content and to MAS Context's editorial focus. Current events are displayed on a light background that inverts when you scroll down to past events.
WEBSITE CREDITS
John Pobojewski Concept, Design Direction, Strategy, and Design
Bud Rodecker Design Direction and Design
Cheryl Kao Design
Ell Mortensen Design
Collin Joyce Web Development