Background
Design Matters has worked with Phases since 2015. Each year, the conference returns with a new visual identity, new speakers and programme content, while also carrying photography, recordings, editorial material and previous editions.
For a conference built for the global design community, the website is part of the experience itself. It has to make a strong first impression, but it also has to help visitors quickly understand the event, explore the line-up, buy tickets and submit proposals.
For many years, the conference websites were delivered on WordPress. As the visual direction became more ambitious and the amount of content grew, the existing setup began to limit how freely the front end could evolve and how consistently new editions could be managed.
The next step was to create a platform that gave the creative team more room without making publishing harder behind the scenes.
Solution
We rebuilt Design Matters 2026 on Umbraco 13.5.2, creating a structured CMS foundation underneath a highly expressive front end.
The site uses bold typography, strong section breaks, image-led layouts and carefully placed motion to give the conference an immediate identity. Four selectable themes — Sea Green, Licorice, Blond and Delft Blue — let the visual presentation change while the content structure and navigation remain consistent.
In Umbraco, we created reusable blocks for hero areas, calls to action, cards, galleries and content sections, together with structured content types for line-up entries, partners and previous events. This gives editors a reliable way to add and update content without weakening the design.
The front end was built with HTML, CSS, vanilla JavaScript and selective GSAP animation. Accessibility was considered throughout, including heading structure, keyboard use, contrast checks and reduced-motion behaviour.
Impact
The result is a website that feels unmistakably Design Matters while still being easy to navigate.
Visitors can move naturally between six of the conference’s most important journeys: tickets, proposals, line-up, recordings, magazine and podcast content. The design carries the energy expected by a design-literate audience, while the structure keeps those actions clear.
For the Design Matters team, the bigger change is what sits underneath the interface. Instead of treating each annual site as a completely separate build, they now have a reusable Umbraco foundation that supports new visual directions while preserving familiar content structures and publishing patterns.
That gives the team more freedom to evolve the conference identity from one edition to the next without having to rethink the underlying website each time.
4x
selectable visual themes
6key
visitor journeys brought into one clear experience
1fully
reusable design system for future editions
“Umbraco is much more intuitive and user-friendly compared to platforms like WordPress. The design this year is working great; it loads quickly and provides a seamless experience for our users. We've found the platform much easier for our team to manage.”
