Responses by Allison Connell, design director, Athletics; and Annika Hansteen-Izora, founder, Creative Ecosystems.

Background: “Creative Ecosystems is meant to be a digital tool for Black artists, creatives and collectives to find one another, support each other, collaborate and grow,” says Annika Hansteen-Izora.

Design core: “The ability to sort ecosystems by their location, theme or space type, and the ability of individual ecosystems to list what monetary or supply support they need,” says Hansteen-Izora. “The boldness in the type and playfulness in color are key elements of the design style.”

Favorite details: “The detail I’m most proud of is the Get Involved section on each ecosystem’s page,” says Hansteen-Izora. “Ecosystems can list ways folks can either invest in their work, or they can connect with them further to be a part of an ecosystem. This detail captures how this site is more than a directory but a tool for collective building and creation.”

New lessons: “The way we were all thinking about Creative Ecosystems shifted partway through the project,” says Allison Connell. “Annika had initially talked about the directory with a focus on providing resources to ecosystems, but as the project evolved, the focus shifted to the directory being a place to encourage discovery and connections. This was a great reminder to always come back to a project’s goals throughout the design process to evaluate what you’re making.

“On a more tactical level, we used this project as a test to try new approaches and a new process around how we explore a site’s interactions and animations in the design phase. In particular, [we made] more use of Figma’s Smart Animate features to quickly explore and iterate what we were designing.”

Navigation structure: “We wanted to keep the navigation simple and focused on discovery. The directory view is primarily dedicated to the location, theme, and space filters to allow users to explore further there. On profiles—and throughout the site—that recedes in favor of the Creative Ecosystems mark to keep attention on the content. Intending to connect Black people and Black ecosystems with one another, we focused on location as a primary connection point to bring into in-page navigation at the bottom of profiles.”

Special features: “One primary focus of the build was around the ecosystem submission and management process. We wanted to lower the barrier to entry through the submission process, and it was important to Annika that ecosystems could also have their own logins and manage their own pages. Information collected through the submission form automatically feeds into their profile content. We used a WordPress plugin called Profile Builder Pro to help manage the profiles. The Ecosystems can log in and have a front-end profile editing view [without accessing] the CMS.”