Designing an irresistible online experience into the offerings of Denise Shanté Brown
Denise Shanté Brown is a design strategist, writer, facilitator, and fellow co-conspirator whose practice explores the intersections of design justice, disability justice, and Black-led liberation.
As her work expanded across writing, facilitation, publishing, and community practice, she sought a website capable of holding the “full breadth” of her creative ecosystem. Together, we envisioned a digital space that could support these interconnected bodies of work while inviting visitors into a slower, more reflective experience.
I led the redesign of the website’s information architecture, identity system, and UX design, co-developing the central concept with Denise Shanté. Drawing on editorial pacing and digital collage, the design introduces a literary rhythm that encourages visitors to slow down, linger, and explore.
with
my role
- Concept design (co-designed with Denise Shanté Brown)
- Identity system (co-designed with Denise Shanté Brown)
- Web design
- UX
A website as a portal
The website is conceived as a series of portals, inviting visitors into Denise Shanté Brown’s different areas of practice. Drawing inspiration from tarot decks, handwritten postcards, and literary ephemera, each portal becomes a distinct space of inquiry. Much like in Denise Shanté’s own practice, the UX experience evokes the pacing of gentle, sensorial rituals.
Writing as ritual
The typographic system evokes the worlds of literature, correspondence, and archival texts, pairing the calligraphic forms of Boogy Brut with the expressive TAN Meringue. The result is a font combination that recalls the movement of a hand across the page, while UI elements set in DM Sans Mono evoke the rhythmic clatter of typewriters.
Textural unfoldings
Photography is treated as an extension of the portal concept. Warm, expansive imagery combines with rich colour fields and tactile textures to suggest spaces of transformation and emergence.
