HINTERLAND 2026: LARGE SCALE WEB DESIGN

This is a theoretical redesign of the Hinterland website for my final project as part of my advanced web design course at Iowa State with professor Ashley Rippke.

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Hinterland is a music festival in Iowa that provides a curated experience focused on safety, connection, fun, and relaxation. Recognizing these core values, I created a web experience that allows users to rely on the site for all of their planning needs without struggling to search or risking information fatigue. Many competing festival sites are poster-forward with a lack of user-centered design. My goal was to give Hinterland a competitive edge by making the site dynamic and engaging with a lot of moving parts and well defined sections for important information. To achieve this, I focused on implementing a dynamic user interface while prioritizing information architecture.

 

As the designer and creative director, it was important to build a brand identity that paid homage to the previous few years of festival while setting 2026 apart as the best yet! Hinterland is such an incredible, welcoming, and well-put-together annual event – the website and branding should both reflect that and build upon their goals as a business by keeping festival-goers coming back for more.

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I researched predicted graphic design trends for 2026 and found that festive block prints, bold color palettes, and heavy texture would be sought after to compete with AI. I started by researching other festival sites and found that many of them have a poster-first approach and aren’t very designed. Hinterland caters a wide age range, so it was important to create something that didn't target a specific generation.

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Overall, I'm really proud of the outcome of this design. I learned a lot about music industry specifics, and even had the opportunity to receive feedback from the current Hinterland and First Fleet Concerts graphic designer, which really influenced edits and decisions made.