Hamburg-based design studio Liebermann Kiepe Reddemann on how to innovate your web design

A lot has been going on for Hamburg-based design studio Liebermann Kiepe Reddemann since the last time we spoke. “During the pandemic, many of our clients were faced with the necessity of complete digitisation” explains David Liebermann, the studio’s co-founder. “Exhibitions could not be visited, art fairs did not take place, galleries closed down, festivals only happened online and retail stores remained empty.” As such, the studio's portfolio of designing websites flourished, pushing the innovation of web design to new and exciting results. “This extreme situation required finding new concepts and applications to transfer artistic positions, spatial experiences or exhibition situations to the web in a holistic and immersive manner,” David adds.

How, then, do Libermann Kiepe Reddemann maintain such a strength of variety across its website designs? Each one breathes with a life of its own, but still holds a characteristic quality of the design studio’s aesthetic. “In order to design an individual experience, it is important to communicate ideas through form, and a website is an extension of the content, not just a placeholder,” David explains. “Such a concept in interaction design, animation and aesthetics most likely results in a memorable, mindful and reasonable interaction.” Rather than focus on a ‘signature’ visual style, the design studio instead opts to “find interactive concepts and user experiences that best represents the content”, with hopes to bring their client’s work to a new, elevated level. To find inspiration for such work, the team often rely on their teaching. “In exchange with our students we get to know different points of views, approaches and ways of thinking,” David says. One easy way to find the litany of website inspirations for the studio is to also locate their blog, “where we post websites that are interesting to us”, David explains.

One look at their work and you’ll find how the studio pay careful, minute attention to their craft. On Euro–Vision, the team wanted to represent an artistic research led by the collective FRAUD, who explore “the extractivist gaze of European institutions and their policies", says David. Using the “critical raw materials” as a starting point, the website presents the projects “created for this purpose as well as the related research and their interconnections”, by basing the graphics off infographic, reports and studies that FRAUD uses for its own research. Meanwhile, for the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, the team was tasked with creating an online identity for “one of the most important short film festivals in Europe.” To do so, they based the graphic language on test images, “which are commonly used to assess image quality and to assist with image adjustment and troubleshooting", David explains. “On the website, those elements help to structure the individual articles and guarantee an optimal line length. All images are inverted since the large number of film images means that very heterogeneous image material has to be displayed.”

And these are only a small sample size of the mesmerising and intelligent work that Liebermann Kiepe Reddemann puts into its website design. Whether it be creating a visual identity, transmuting heavy concepts into online art, or simply creating an innovative user experience, the design studio is at the forefront of the industry.