For non-profit The Humanity Initiative, I designed and built a new site to drive higher engagement with their unique blend of content and archive of inspiring commencement speeches.
Core to The Humanity Initiative's engagement with visitors worldwide is their archive of inspiring commencement speeches, collected over thirty years. These are cross-indexed with other suggested content, encouraging nonlinear paths of exploration and discovery. A sense of calm, positivity and illumination inspires repeat visits.
A major challenge was finding a way to present ostensibly disconnected content such that connections are suggested and browsing feels expansive and seductive, rather than dissonant. Closely nested cards, built on a randomizer, allow content to be sorted, filtered, or simply experienced in a low-friction, intuitive fashion, the organic grid working with the various aspect ratios of the images while also creating visual rhythms and breaking up what might otherwise appear more transactional and unapproachable.