Designing for Media-Rich Sites
Having built Funkhaus as a creative digital agency out of Los Angeles means our clients have always been media people — filmmakers, production companies, publishers, studios, and more.
After spending as much time as we have in editorial website design and building media-rich digital platforms, a few clear principles have emerged.
Put Content on a Pedestal
For these clients, the content is the product. Design has to serve it, not compete with it. Think of it like a movie theater: the lights go down so you can focus on the screen. When the design knows when to step back, the content lands harder. The goal is an ebb and flow: generous, media-rich moments balanced by breathing room that gives the experience a sense of pace.
Pay Attention to the In-Between
Though content is a primary focus, the brand lives in the in-between. As Funkhaus Managing Partner Nick Dies puts it: "Think of the negative space around content as an opportunity to design the brand. How does their unique DNA inform the layout and experience of the site? These areas are where identity really shows up — where you can create a story for the user that subliminally imbues the experience with qualities unique to the brand."
Build for the Team That Has to Manage It
A beautiful site that becomes a nightmare to update six months later isn't a win. For clients who are regularly publishing content and building their archive, the backend infrastructure matters as much as the front end. To accommodate, we offer modular design systems, with flexible components that can snap together in different configurations. The goal is that the client's team can build and rearrange pages on the fly without things breaking or losing the cohesion of the design.
"How does their unique DNA inform the layout and experience of the site? These areas are where identity really shows up — where you can create a story for the user that subliminally imbues the experience with qualities unique to the brand."
Art Direction Doesn't End at Launch
Choosing the right still from a video is a compositional decision. Uploading footage with baked-in letterboxing, burned-in titles, or watermarks undermines the work, no matter how well-designed the page is. Part of our process is training clients on how to actually operate the site — what to look for when selecting a thumbnail, why cropping decisions matter at different breakpoints, how to think about image naming and tagging. It's not the most glamorous, but it makes a real difference.
Performance Is Part of the Design
The biggest misconception about media-rich sites is that high fidelity has to come at the cost of speed. It doesn't. We've built a front-end infrastructure that consistently scores in the 90th percentile on speed and SEO metrics — on sites with full-bleed video, dense editorial layouts, and large image libraries. Fast load times are always a goal, to protect the brand experience and keep search visibility strong.
Show Less Than You Think You Should
If there's one instinct we consistently push back on, it's the urge to show every single project and the work behind it. We get why there's that impulse, but for production companies, studios, and entertainment brands, the website is a brand builder, something that helps the user form an impression and then want to reach out. That's why we encourage decisive curation.
Give people enough to be interested and get a clear picture, not so much that they feel like they've seen it all or that they are overwhelmed. Make choices with site architecture that keep navigation feeling like a focused endeavor. That confident presentation keeps the brand and the UX strong.