08.24.15
Sight Unseen Presents
Welcome to Our New Website!
If you’re a longtime reader of Sight Unseen, you might know that the site you saw at this URL until yesterday was essentially the same one we’d had since the day we launched in November 2009 — practically the Jurassic era, in terms of web design. We’ve stayed true to that original look for so long in part because it was, well, super pretty. But as the years went by, and we amassed more than 1,000 stories — most of which are still relevant today, like this one on Faye Toogood’s inspirations from 2010, or this glimpse inside the home of Rafael de Cardenas — we realized that our site had the potential to do so much more.
With that in mind, we turned to the talented team at RoAndCo, who had created new sites for friends of ours like Homepolish and Field, with a very specific brief. We asked them to create a new look for Sight Unseen that would keep the spirit of Thomas Porostocky’s original design alive — warm and inviting fonts, our signature colors, and a logo we still love to this day — but to update it with 2015 technology, and to make it far more dynamic. We wanted readers to feel a sense of discovery wherever they looked on the site, and we wanted to make it infinitely easier to access our incredible archive. We also wanted to put a proper spotlight on all the projects we do offline, which have grown to encompass a huge part of Sight Unseen’s identity since we began in 2009.
So what can you expect from our new design? On the homepage, we’ve made it easier to discover new products in our online shop, both in the top right column and in a carousel at the bottom of the page. We’re huge Pinterest fans, so we’ve brought in a feed of some of our favorite pins as well. You’ll notice some of the stories on the homepage have a small, blue bar marked Archive — get to know some of our favorite former story subjects there. And we’ve made it easier to browse some of our most popular columns: A different Eye Candy will appear at the top right of the homepage each time you visit, and in the top nav bar, there are dedicated areas for both studio visits and home tours.
Also in the top nav bar: Easy access to our microsite for the Sight Unseen OFFSITE design fair, which we’ve produced annually for the past five years, and an entire “SU Projects” page that’s devoted to documenting the parties, pop-ups, showcases, and editorial campaigns in collaboration with incredible partners that we’ve never had the chance to show off before now. Plus, a long-overdue permanent home for our popular annual American Design Hot List.
So please — look around and stay a while, and we hope you leave today feeling as inspired as we do. As always, if you like what you see, and you want to submit your work, write for us, advertise, or plan for some other form of design-world domination together, do get in touch!