Ransom Note is an online music, arts and culture publication and record label. With a dream brief to push the creative as far as possible to reflect their unorthodox and offbeat brand, we designed a magazine site that is fresh, vibrant and immersive. Interactivity, animation and detailed design elements were balanced against being mindful of usability and site speed.

Ransom Note is packed with content, so a careful consideration of how the user would navigate through to each section was essential. Readers not only enjoy the content, complemented by witty GIFs and bold typography, but now have the opportunity to become part of a new community to voice opinions about topics and issues they are passionate about. The magazine provides a platform for this community of readers to share their stories and engage in the evolution of underground subculture.

The website communicates a relaxed and playful tone of voice to mirror the user experience as well as convey that the website is about music for everyone. Readers can find quirky surprise design features throughout that are reflective of the Ransom Note brand personality, making the site unique.

Ransom Note has been built considering mobile-first – ensuring the content was easy-to-read with bursts of bite-sized sections and interesting navigation to help the reader through to relevant articles and introduce them to brand new content. Ransom Note’s own family of record labels are showcased on the website, encouraging readers to discover fresh new music from house to disco to electro and more.

Because the site is so reliant on transitions, animations and content – vital for the aesthetic – our in-house developers experimented with new ways of building the pages so that they could still perform exceptionally in terms of speed and SEO. The introduction by Google of Core Vitals also came into play when the project was underway, and we had to ensure information loaded fast – which added an extra layer of complexity to ensure commercial success for Ransom Note.