UX/UI • Creative Direction • Strategy • Brand

CSS Design Awards

Website of the Year Experience

CSS Design Awards

Website of the Year Experience

CSS Design Awards

Website of the Year Experience

The CSS Design Awards are one of the digital industry’s leading showcases of inspiration digital design, trends and creativity. Each day they award digital designers with 'site of the day'. At the end of each year also present annual awards, known as CSSDA Website of the Year.

The Brief

Building the Home of Digital Creativity

Create a compelling digital experience for the annual awards. In doing so capture the pure creativity and community that powers the CSS Design Awards

I developed the concept of a ‘Neon Coral’ as an expression of community and creativity. Through a vastness of the digital sea, the CSS Design Awards acts as a thriving sanctuary of digital creativity.

The hero coral was created in 3D, and adorned with vibrant neon plant life that is 'electrified' with hues of pink and cyan. I also created a range of secondary 3D corals and objects that filled out the environment and included the CSSDA WOTY Winner trophy, crystals and even jellyfish (named Squee).

Having finalised the concept narrative and developed the core visual assets I then collaborated with the team to translate the visual concept into an engaging digital experience. Through motion and frontend design we were able to create an intriguing and exotic, electric habitat.

Interaction was an important facet of the experience. To that end I developed rotation animations of the Neon Coral, which was supported by 3D typography. Both were coded to move with mouse movements. This gave the elements of the website an otherworldly quality of floating.

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