Creating Freely

Creating Freely publishes emerging artists, designers and photographers from anywhere in the world, alongside fashion photography. It argues for sustainable materials, ethical production and buying less, so the shop and the editorial had to share one site without the shop taking over.

I was the only developer, working with a designer and a lead who reviewed my pull requests.

I carried a printed magazine's character into the front end: editorial layouts, large typography, full-bleed imagery and custom 3D elements. The rhythm holds from a wide desktop down to a phone.

Heavy imagery and 3D are the usual way to kill a page's speed. Next.js with server-side rendering kept it fast anyway: pages arrive as ready HTML, search engines see every article, and the visuals load around content that is already there.

There is no custom backend: the site runs on a CMS the editors control themselves. Print-on-demand turns pieces into physical products (photo books, sketchbooks, prints), so a story and the thing you can buy sit in the same flow, and embedded audio brings sound into the pages.