An adaptable website to support the two-year cycle of the contemporary art festival whilst bringing its artistic vision to the forefront.
Liverpool Biennial
Role
Designer
Agency
Cog Design
Services
Web Design
User Experience
Design Systems
The Liverpool Biennial is the UK’s largest festival of contemporary visual art held every two years across the city.
The new site needed to support evolving content across the Biennial’s two-year cycle, whilst better showcasing its artistic vision and charitable purpose.
The previous site didn’t showcase the festival’s visually rich programme and important revenue-generating areas like donations and the online shop were underemphasised, limiting their visibility and impact.
Persona workshops revealed user priorities that would shape the structure and tone of the website.
The project kicked off with a workshop to create a set of personas, user types were plotted on a scale of functionality and tone. This exercise revealed that most users already had some familiarity with contemporary art and primarily sought practical visitor information. These insights guided the content structure and tone, starting with the site architecture.
Mapping a structure that could flex depending on whether the festival was live, upcoming, or archived was priority. Further goals were to ensure users could navigate an archive of past Biennials including an artist directory, and access event and venue information.
Given the cyclical nature of the festival, the navigation and homepage were designed to be manually adjustable by the client, allowing the site to shift emphasis depending on the time of year and current programming. We introduced a flag onto the homepage that clearly labelled the ‘state’ of the festival.
Bespoke design features to present content visually such as maps and itineries helped users plan a visit more effectively.
The layout was image-led to showcase artwork with generous white space and neutral tones. Similarly, accent colour was reserved for call to actions such as donating.
Where possible, content was organised and presented visually to aid audiences planning their visit. I created time based itineraries, addressing user types and built bespoke maps that would allow the client to populate and plot a recommended itinerary around the city for visitors.
I created a component library to build a versatile design system, ensuring consistency across the site while supporting a wide range of content.
Liverpool Biennial continues to grow in audience, recognition, and partnerships. The website now supports that growth with a digital experience aligned to the festival’s ambition.
