KATAPULT-Magazin.de

While working at KATAPULT magazine, one of my main priorities was to replace the old website with a new performant and stylistically fresh one. The previous Typo3 instance had had its day in terms of functionality as well as design. Kirby was used as the CMS for the new website.

I already started working on a design system for smaller websites in the KATAPULT universe. It evolved with smaller side projects and came to full fruition in the course of the new website. Since KATAPULT is a print-first project, the distinctive style was created within the context of printed issues of the magazine. The design system thus represents the best possible translation from print to digital. Under the hood, it’s a Sass framework that provides a set of basic components and is extended with Tailwind-inspired utilities.

About half of the development time went into a migration script — converting old articles from a WYSIWYG editor to Kirby’s block format, ideally incorporating all the HTML content variations that had crept into the WYSIWYG content over the years, represented the biggest effort.

The biggest challenge was just as much the definitive joy of the project: constructing the design as well as implementing it with CSS and vanilla JS. I prefer agile design-based development — designing directly in/with code. In other words, a prototype up front was skipped. This requires trust on both sides. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Benni for giving me the freedom to let me work fully and autonomously; to trust me and my skills.

Finding the right mélange of KATAPULT vibe and online magazine took me quite a while until I got into the flow and was able to implement the layout of the website in about two weeks.