Native Magazine
A website re-design to bring the magazine in line with its progressive values
Dark & gritty with mass appeal
Fresh off the back of their collaboration with Nike and their Festival’s success, Native needed a new website to reflect their positioning as a publication for the people.
We made it slightly rough around the edges while retaining a clean-cut look and feel. Our guide for the visual language was ‘vintage modernised’, with added character coming from references to African style and heritage.
View live website View live websiteDocumenting the music, culture & style of Tomorrow: Today.
Encouraging browsing
We wanted to celebrate the different mediums of art featured on the site, and so we gave a lot of real estate to their vibrant imagery.
The focus on visuals, paired with a shallow-hierarchy encouraged browsing and focused on simplicity – achieving Native’s goals.
Native also needed space to grow, and so we had to design the site in a way which allowed them to easily create new sections in the future to expand their offering for their audience.
The process
Exploring, testing & capturing users’ thoughts to iterate & refine
A user-centric approach
We wanted to understand users’ thoughts on Native’s existing platform to inform us as to how we can take it to the next level.
Native’s existing platform did the job, but it didn’t reflect their personality. Users wanted to feel like they were being transported on a tour of the different countries of Africa, depending on which piece of content they were browsing. At the same time, they wanted something which was easier to browse and consume content on.
We wanted to make it incredibly easy for the user to access all areas of the platform on every single page. We ran various tests and users appreciated the slight differences in thumbnail appearances to help them easily identify the different types of content on the site. We also embedded a music player into the site so that users can listen to Native’s latest mixes while they browse.
