Curtin university
Curtin's annual Design Gradshow is a night for graduating Design students to exhibit their achievements over their years of study. This showcase includes work from digital experience and interaction design (DIGEX), graphic design and animation and game design students, and has their own live website each year for those who cannot attend in person.
Create the live Design Gradshow 2023 website that showcases final year students and their work in a clear and unique manner, aligning with the chosen subversive, rock aesthetic.
01 What is the best way to organise all the students and their information?
02 How do we make the website feel interactive and fun without taking away from the students?
To fit the 2023 theme, we wanted to reference this aesthetic's type of lifestyle and interests. We specifically took inspiration from vintage, rock posters, festival websites and expressionist artists.
Key elements in their designs are symmetry, high contrasting colours and distinct figure ground.
While the website is heavily stylised, we also wanted to maintain the professionalism of the students and make each student's portfolio easily accessible to viewers as it was the main comments made from the previous years' website.
The final design of the 2023 Design Gradshow website uses a combination of sound, microinteractions and saturated, high contrasting colours while mimicking the physical aspects of a music festival to create a fun and lighthearted environment. With a countdown to build anticipation and excitement amongst attendees, the 2023 Design Gradshow is hard to forget!
Students have their work published online where it can be seen by anyone, anywhere, anytime, allowing for opportunities to come their way.
Industry professionals can filter graduates by discipline easily since it is highly organised through the use of similar colour coding. Navigating the website and finding student information is also made simple through the use of consistency in page formatting.
This project was an example of how we adapted to aesthetics that are vastly different to our own. The early stages of designing the Design Gradshow website was challenging because we've never worked with a theme this bold and specific, so we decided to take the theme quite literally when ideating for interactive elements and graphics which made the 2023 website stand out the most amongst the other years. Based on the feedback from tutors and peers, we also decided to rearrange the information architecture this year to have the student portfolios more accessible and to remove the 'on-hover' effect on the images to keep things professional.
Credits to all the talented UX and Web Devs involved in the 2023 Gradshow.
