Big Spaceship — Site Design

The Guggenheim

Senior Designer · Design Lead · Product Design · UX/UI

The Guggenheim website had to serve two very different needs: help visitors plan a physical visit, and give people a meaningful way to explore the museum from anywhere. At Big Spaceship, I helped lead the 2016 redesign, rethinking exhibitions, events, visitor information, and the collection as a clearer, more connected digital experience.

The work shown here is from the 2016 redesign of Guggenheim.org; the site has since been redesigned.

project context

Designing through transition

A few months into the project, our design director and both project managers left. The core team became Dabney, Elisa, and me, and we carried the redesign through launch together.

visitor experience

Designing for visitors

We made practical information easier to find and built clearer paths through exhibitions, events, tickets, and planning a visit. On mobile, the experience could surface location-aware information for visitors at a specific Guggenheim museum.

digital collection

Exploring the museum online

The site also needed to work as a museum experience in its own right. We created richer ways to move through exhibitions, individual artworks, audio, video, and archival material dating back to the 1930s—whether or not someone could visit in person.

visual system

Evolving the Guggenheim system

We extended the Guggenheim identity into a flexible responsive system, retaining the existing logo and Verlag typography while developing new patterns for navigation, color, content, and interaction. The visual language also took cues from the architecture of the New York museum.

Visual language

Verlag, a restrained grayscale palette, and a small set of accent colors and icons formed the foundation of the interface.

System components

Responsive structure

The system was designed to flex across dense editorial content, visitor information, and media-rich experiences, with patterns that adapted consistently from desktop to mobile.

Motion & interaction

Motion was used sparingly to clarify state changes, reinforce relationships, and add personality to key interactions.

Search

Exhibition Landing Page

Timeline

outcome

Guggenheim.org

The redesign created a more coherent digital entry point to the Guggenheim—supporting practical visitor needs while making the museum’s exhibitions, collection, and archives easier to explore online.

timeline

2016

platforms

Web

Role

Design

focus

Product Design
UX/UI
Design Direction

recognition

2017 Webby Awards
Honoree – Cultural Institutions

2018 Webby Awards
Honoree – Cultural Institutions, Mobile Sites & Apps

Collaborators

Elisa Penello, Design
Dabney Donigan, UX
Jason Permenter, Design Director
Kat Sekar, Analytics
Lesley Melincoff + Grace McCants, Production

Our team led the product and visual design; development and implementation were handled separately.