While We Wake: Website & Brand Design

While We Wake is a digital publishing platform focused on minimalism and intentional living. They needed a website that felt like the content itself: calm, considered, and premium. The brief was to create a "jazz-inspired" editorial aesthetic that could coexist with a structure built for growth and reader engagement.

I handled the full brand direction and website build. The goal was to create something that feels more like a curated magazine than a blog, where every layout decision supports the reading experience.

Key design decisions:

Editorial grid system inspired by print magazine layouts

Colors from the hour before sunrise: deep cocoa, first-light blue and a soft morning sky, with a light mode that flips them for daytime reading

Typography: Marcellus, a carved inscriptional serif, for headings and Literata for comfortable long reads

Generous whitespace to let the content breathe

A custom hand-drawn icon set (sun eye, spiral, fern, rainbow) and a dark cocoa palette with soft blue type, for a calm night-reading feel

GA4 tracking integrated from launch to measure reader engagement

The biggest design challenge was building a system, not just a homepage. While We Wake publishes regularly, so every template needed to work across different content types (long-form essays, interviews, photo stories) while maintaining a consistent brand feel.

I designed reusable content blocks and page templates that the team can populate without breaking the visual identity. The layout adapts to the content, not the other way around.

A premium editorial website that looks and feels like a digital magazine. The brand direction gives While We Wake a distinct identity in a crowded content space, and the scalable design system means they can keep publishing without outgrowing the site. Live at https://www.whilewewake.com

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