welcome to the new designboom! all you need to know about our redesigned website

DESIGNBOOM UNVEILS NEW WEBSITE

Since we first hand-coded our way onto the internet in 1999, designboom has never really sat still. If you have been reading us for a while, you know we’ve completely rebuilt our digital home multiple times over the last 27 years. And in between six major website iterations, we’re always tinkering, introducing intuitive new tweaks and optimizing features. But a couple of years ago, we realized we didn’t just need another visual refresh, we needed to completely rethink how our community interacts with our content.

After months of planning, we are excited to introduce our brand new website! We wanted to build a space where beautiful images and video have generous room to breathe, where our 27-year archive unfolds like a living network, and where editorial content, sound, maps, and community ideas take center stage. The result is a sharper, more interactive designboom, uncluttered, intuitive, and built for curiosity. Here is what’s new.

save stories, BUILD YOUR OWN ARCHIVE

Finding a brilliant architectural pavilion from last week or a forgotten chair design from 2007 is only half the experience; holding onto it is the other. You can now create a free account on designboom to bookmark articles, build your own permanent visual library, and easily track the status of your project submissions all in one place.

NO MORE PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING

The most radical change to the site is what you won’t see. We have completely removed programmatic banner advertising. Instead of filling our pages with automatically placed advertisements, we’re reserving commercial space for direct brand partnerships that actually make sense for our audience. This allows us to have greater control over what appears alongside our editorial content, and to create a more beautiful browsing experience with less visual interruptions.

For us, this decision goes beyond cleaning up the interface. We want architecture, design, art and technology to occupy the space they deserve, without irrelevant ads competing for attention. It doesn’t mean commercial partnerships will completely disappear from designboom. Quite the opposite: we believe in building thoughtful collaborations and tell brand stories that matter to us and to our community. 

SOUND, MAPS, AND INTERACTIVE GUIDES

A visual platform doesn’t have to be silent. We’ve launched designboom listens, embedding curated Spotify playlists directly into our guest portraits. Now, you can actually listen to the exact tracks architects and artists play while they work in their studios. We are also expanding our interactive guides and maps, making it much more intuitive to navigate physical events and exhibitions around the globe.

A NEW EDITORIAL RHYTHM: CHAPTERS

Rather than relying solely on a chronological news feed, we introduced designboom Chapters at the beginning of this year. These are curated editorial arcs that cluster our stories around a central theme, spanning from Play and Craft, to Spectacle and how we live together. They now get their much deserved prime spot on the new homepage, as well as an expansive Chapters archive page for readers to explore all themes we’ve covered so far, chronologically.

MORE SPACE FOR READERS and GUEST submissions

With over 200,000 readers actively contributing to designboom, community is the foundation of our platform. The new homepage gives reader-submitted projects a much clearer, dedicated space alongside our daily editorial stream. Furthermore, we have completely revamped the homepage look of our design-directory, competitions, courses and shop.

A MORE VISUAL AND CONNECTED DESIGNBOOM

We’ve given images and video a more prominent role throughout the website, while refining typography, spacing and the overall visual language. The idea was to let projects speak for themselves, whether they involve an entire building, an experimental material or an object small enough to fit in your pocket. We’ve kept the interface deliberately restrained, allowing the work we publish to provide most of the color. Less digital ‘clutter’, fewer places for the eye to trip over it.

We’ve also brought our archive closer to the surface. Stories now connect more naturally through designers, architects, locations and subjects, turning tags into possible routes through more than two decades of publishing. You might arrive looking for a building completed last week and end up discovering a table from 2009. We rather like that possibility. After all, the internet should occasionally allow us to get pleasantly lost.

Taken together, these changes reflect what we want designboom to be today: a place to discover what’s happening now, explore what came before, save what matters to you and, every so often, stumble upon something you didn’t know you were looking for.

Welcome to the new designboom. Have a look around, and let us know what you think! 💛