Responses by Ben Wegscheider, creative director, Bureau Cool

Core design: The site shows the broad variety of output Timetable Records has, from music to products to interactive pieces. We designed the site to be more like an archive, keeping the layout simple but creating special, unexpected moments during transitions and for type treatments—stretching a row’s title when expanding it and using that aesthetic to emphasize the expansion.

Favorite details: The simple, intuitive contracting and expanding of the different category columns allow the visitor to switch from a broad overview to easily home in on more exclusive views easily. Another interesting aspect is that the site mixes 3-D with a flat layout, drawing the user’s focus to certain content, for example, when hovering over items or expanding mixes and events and highlighting links to content.

Technical features: The site is built as a custom JavaScript application using the Kirby CMS to deliver content. Shopify ties the whole shopping process into the CMS as well. The front end combines HTML/CSS and WebGL; WebGL has more stylistic options than regular HTML/CSS, and I think it’s very interesting to combine both seamlessly.

Challenges: Finding ways to display very different kinds of content on a page together without creating too much confusion. Also, making sure performance is good, as the site features a lot of things happening at the same time. Quite some work went into optimization: making sure unused objects were not loaded and removed from memory. Another thing was making sure the mobile experience was as good as the desktop. The layout had to change, but we kept the mechanics as close to the desktop version as possible.