Armac Martin

Bogle Bartle Hegarty (BBH)

The homepage needed to be a place to see everything DSCVRD. Due to the quantity of articles published weekly, we added a few extra features to help authors highlight more significant articles to stop from being buried. Users were encouraged to scroll, with more articles being loaded as they made their way down the page in a 'feed' style.

One of the challenges was to ensure things like featured articles, paid advertisements and other unique article layouts weren't lost as the user scrolled down, so we made sure these would reappear as duplicated content even as the user made their way down the page.

The homepage as a hub

The subject matter of DSCVRD is steeped in personality, and we wanted to make sure this came through in the design. We had access to some great photography from the DSCVRD media team and we included this as part of the navigation.

Opening the nav, the user sees a huge menu set in the DSCVRD brand. Hovering over a category (Shred, Noise, etc) would show one of these images to give the user an idea of the content within.

Navigating sub-cultures

Inspired by the "story"-based content feeds made popular by the likes of Instagram, we wanted to include an option for the editors to put together "at a glance" one-off content. This was perfect for showcasing gig photography, giving the editors the ability to add photographs with short bits of copy in various formats.

Additionally, we added the option for users to share this content with friends. Whilst the content itself was typically embedded within the homepage, we provided a dedicated full-screen page which could be linked to and shared.

Instagram-style content feeds

Similar to the navigation, we wanted to include personality within the category pages. To keep things consistent and to help users better understand where they are in the site, we matched the imagery in both size and content to the image from the navigation.

The articles below, naturally, all live within the named category, but to take things further we also added the option to have those Instagram-style feeds in to specific categories for further customisation for the editors.

Keeping things consistent

Whilst we had a lot of fun with the layout on DSCVRD, we wanted to ensure that the articles were readable. We used a magazine-style layout by utilising columns alongside the imagery, allowed for different formatting styles with pull-out quotes and "text highlighting" options and included various embedding options including YouTube, Vimeo, Bandcamp, Twitter/X, Soundcloud and more.

Keeping things readable

We gave the editors the ability to embed Live YouTube videos directly into the site, which users could watch whilst browsing the site in a picture-in-picture view. This gave the team the chance to bring the venue atmosphere to users, working in collaboration with festivals and gig organisers. As the site was built and launched during the COVID-19 lockdown, this also meant opportunity for artists to stream from home directly to the DSCVRD site.

Turning a website into a venue

Through a series of tagging and content indexing, we created a search that was always up to date, easy to use and quick to find what you were looking for. It could easily be launched from anywhere on the site, delivering users with a page of articles relevant to them.

Search through the noise

music, art, fashion, skateboarding, and everything in between

, DSCVRD was an in-print magazine that we successfully transitioned into the digital realm. This transformation involved not only converting the existing print content into an engaging online format but also 

equipping the editorial team with powerful, intuitive tools

, allowing the editors to effortlessly publish new content, promote articles, and manage the magazine's digital presence with ease.

We enhanced the online platform by enabling the addition of highlights to the homepage, including the capability to feature live videos as well as the ability to search the entire archive.

This upgrade allowed DSCVRD to showcase the latest and greatest in the hardcore scene (and beyond), providing a richer and more interactive experience for its audience. Through a digital solution, we helped DSCVRD to continue to illuminate the vibrant sub-cultures it celebrated, now with the enhanced reach and immediacy of an online platform.

As hardcore and punk fans ourselves, this was a dream job 

we had full creative control over from design to code.

DSCVRD Magazine

Klay Pizzeria & Bar

It was important to the client that these slides be kept secure (and worth noting that the examples used in the screenshots that follow are purely for demonstration purposes and don't reflect any content in use).

With that in mind, we built a two-factor authentication system using a 

 sent to the users' inbox. These accounts could easily be turned on or off in the admin area.

Depending on the users' access levels, would only be given access to specific decks, and couldn't see any other content related to other users. Even guessing the URL would present the user with an 'access restricted' error, whether the content existed or not.

Keep it secret, keep it safe

We wanted to ensure that when presenting to a client, or just browsing around the deck, it should feel as close to a native experience as possible. To that end, we included easy to use navigation, as well as keyboard events to allow navigating through slides with the left and right arrows, returning to the start or traversing to the end with the home and end keys, and exiting the presentation with the escape key.

As easy as a native experience

Creating and editing decks should be as simple as selecting a template and filling in the content. So that's what we did. No pixel pushing, just fill the content in and it watch it appear. We even handled some of the extra editing work such as blurring images, outlining text and rendering SVG's.

All of this was easily handled by Sanity, our CMS of choice.

An intuitive editing experience

Our CMS of choice, Sanity, allows for editing content whether you're sat at your desk, catching up on the latest BBC drama with your tablet or hastily correcting a typo on the train from your phone. The editing experience remains the same.

Editing on the go

Whilst presentations would always be done in a desktop environment, one of the pain points UEFA had was when they wanted to share the presentation with the client to view after the fact, they had to send a PDF which lacked both the impact and the intuition of the original presentation. We ensured that all slides were fully responsive across desktop, tablet and mobile so they could easily view the deck on the go.

Present decks on desktop, tablet or mobile

Our entire goal here was to rid the need for PDF's, but UEFA still wanted to have this option as a fallback, for use in printing and saving a version offline. Always ready for a curve-ball, we provided them with the means to print the slides off should they need it.

We killed the PDF, but fair is fair

 were looking at new and innovative ways of 

. Pitch decks were taking too long to put together, were inconsistent in their design and were lacking a professionalism when walking through them during meetings with their clients; Coca-Cola, Volkswagen, Adidas and so on.

We built them a bespoke system to let them put together their decks 

 using templated layouts they could simply fill out using an intuitive Content Management System (CMS), and we would handle the rest.

 for each client, and client users could authenticate to access decks specific to their role.

Design and development in Staffordshire

Our work

Armac Martin

Bogle Bartle Hegarty (BBH)

DSCVRD Magazine

Klay Pizzeria & Bar

UEFA Dash

Made with NRG

EF Kids & Teens

New business

Let's work together