Downtown Critic

I designed and developed the website for Downtown Critic, an online arts journal. The design brings a spare layout together with a more expressive index, where article titles become buttons and each issue introduces its own visual treatment, giving the publication a recognizable structure while allowing its character to change over time.

Giving each issue its own interface

I designed custom buttons for each issue to reflect the cultural moment in which it appeared. Changes in color, shape, borders, and treatment give each release a distinct register within the shared structure of the site.

As the issues accumulate, the index becomes a visual record of the journal’s changing character.

Leaving the page open to the reader

Images can be dragged away from their initial positions, moved into the margins, or placed across the text. This gives readers a small but direct role in composing the page, changing the relationship between an image and the writing around it.

The interaction treats the layout as something provisional. A photograph remains part of the article, but its placement is open to adjustment, interruption, and play.