Webby Site Rebuild
Turning the Internet's highest honor into a discovery platform.
Founded in 1996 with 15 categories, the Webby Awards had grown to more than 13,000 entries from nearly 70 countries — but webbyawards.com still behaved like a static gallery of winners.
As Executive Producer I set out to transform it into a living product: a place professionals come to research, browse, and benchmark the best of the internet, while opening new membership and revenue opportunities for the organization.
We grounded the rebuild in data — nearly two decades of winners, categories, and media formats — alongside audience and stakeholder interviews to define who the platform really serves.
Working with our design-build partner BASIC/DEPT, we pressure-tested direction through rapid functional prototypes before committing to a full build.
- years of winners data
- 17
- entries archived
- 13,000+
- countries represented
- ~70
The new site introduced a flexible design system and tile architecture able to hold every media type and aspect ratio without breaking, plus a color system that codes content by medium for instant visual context.
Reworked navigation keeps categories and media types in view at all times, and a deeper search-and-filter layer lets visitors slice 17 years of work into custom cross-sections. New member accounts added saving, sharing, and a premium tier. Design and development were led by BASIC/DEPT.
The rebuilt webbyawards.com launched in May 2020, with coverage in TechCrunch (“The Webby Awards polish up their gallery of internet history”) and ADWEEK.
It reframed two-plus decades of Webby archives as a destination for inspiration and research — not just a list of winners.
- EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
- Steve Marchese
- DESIGN & BUILD
- BASIC/DEPT®