Walking in Air
Walking in Air is an interdisciplinary practice-based research project led by Emmanuelle Waeckerlé (University for the Creative Arts) and Will Montgomery (Royal Holloway, University of London). Working across poetry, music, fine art, and performance, it uses walking as both method and metaphor.
As a studio rooted in the belief that design should facilitate deep reflection, we created a minimalist visual identity and developed a custom WordPress website as a calm, breathable digital home for the project. Built as a filterable digital archive, it’s designed to hold evolving research materials over time while staying clear to navigate and easy to linger in.
Project Team
Branding and UX Design: Katie Gee
UI Design: Katie Gee and Cecilia Righini
Development: Nata Sheketa
The Challenge
The project needed a site that could do two things at once: introduce Walking in Air to new audiences, and function as an expanding research repository for people already involved.
Content spans many formats and contexts—events, workshops and discussions, performances, texts and scores, recordings, and partner activity. Because we understand that information should be a tool for liberation, not a barrier, we focused on “findability.” Visitors needed a reliable way to browse by type and year, without having to learn the “right” route through the archive.
Our challenge was to ensure the digital experience felt conceptually aligned with the work: contemporary and minimal without becoming empty—spacious, but still grounded and informative.
What We Did
We strategically mapped an information architecture that makes the project’s materials easy to explore over time, with clear pathways into events, people, and research resources. Leveraging our expertise in user-centered design, we implemented a user-friendly filtering system that helps people find specific works without friction.
Visually, we developed an identity and web design that supports the project’s themes through calm, natural-feeling colour, inclusive typography, and generous spacing. The layout creates a sense of breathability, supporting slow attention without clutter.
We also prioritised a mobile-first responsive design, ensuring that the layouts adapt across screen sizes to stay readable and uncluttered for users on the move.
Impact
Walking in Air now has a bespoke digital home that can grow without losing coherence. By turning complex research into an accessible archive, we have enabled participants, collaborators, and researchers to move between overview and detail with confidence.
The calm interface encourages sustained engagement with the research, while the robust WordPress build supports ongoing publishing and updates. The result is a sustainable digital infrastructure that allows the organisers to document new activity as the project continues to evolve, ensuring the research remains visible and impactful for years to come.
