Responses by Giorgio Finulli, interaction designer and developer; Michele Gallina, chief executive officer and cofounder; and Luisa Ruzzenenti, art director, Basilico.

Background: The site was created to present the Palermo edition of Digital Design Days to an international audience of creative professionals and digital communication experts. Its goals were to showcase the event’s program, speakers and activities; support ticket sales; and serve as a real-time reference tool during the event itself.

The site was a central asset in the broader Digital Design Days campaign. It was the main point of contact and information hub, consolidating all event details in one place. It was also designed to be easily adapted for future editions, including the upcoming Milan event, keeping a consistent look and feel while allowing for edition-specific branding and content.

Design core: An organized presentation of the program, speakers and activities that helps visitors quickly understand the event and navigate the contents.

A nostalgic digital aesthetic expressed through microinteractions evoking coding and command-line aesthetics.

Colorful gradients inspired by heat maps add a sense of warmth and human presence; generated in real time with WebGL, they adapt their colors for each event to create a consistent visual treatment for images and video.

An interactive WebGL element on the homepage that integrates brand colors and logo-inspired forms, delivering a consistent and immersive visual experience across devices, including mobile.

A structured schedule page with a multi-column layout on desktop for planning and a mobile version designed for quick reference and usability.

Favorite details: We are especially proud of the balance we achieved between high-impact design and usability. One of the key features is the schedule, which is often a pain point at conferences—especially when you need to check it quickly on mobile, and something we usually find ourselves complaining about. That’s why we put a lot of care into making it as usable as possible.

Challenges: Achieving the right balance between advanced interactive elements and performance was the biggest challenge. We wanted an immersive design that felt truly digital but was still highly usable and fast.

Time constraints: Time constraints meant we had to be very focused in prioritizing features. We chose to do progressive releases so we could go online as early as possible with ticket sales, allowing the event organizers to move forward. This approach gave us time to concentrate on effects, animations, design and development so we could deliver a second, more complete and refined version.

Technology: The front end was built with vanilla JavaScript, using GSAP for text animations, Lenis scrollbar, and swup for AJAX navigation and managing fragments for overlays. WebGL was handled by Federico Valla with the OGL library only to keep it lightweight. The back end uses ProcessWire (PHP) with Twig templates and includes a caching layer to improve loading times.

On desktop, WebGL effects are fully integrated with Lenis scrollbar for smooth, synced animations. On mobile, to ensure a frictionless UX, we avoided that and limited WebGL to the homepage only. This keeps the real-time intro animation while maintaining native behavior.