- 5h
- 3 min read
Your names | Maki Ozawa; Guillermo Brotons
Design studio | Decimal
Featured website | https://www.thelotradio.com/
1 / Tell us a bit about yourself, your role, and how you found your way to a creative career
Maki I’m Maki, a junior designer at Decimal. In this project I mainly helped with the fine tweaks of specific pages / features, and also quality assurance. I’ve always been the “artsy” kid growing up, doing a lot of drawing and sketching. The first time I encountered graphic design was in high school, I went to this art high school in Taiwan and majored in commercial and brand identity.
Guillermo I’m Guillermo, founding partner and creative director at Decimal. I was the creative lead on this project, working with Maki and Oscar Pico on the design of the website. As Maki, I was also a kid who loved to draw and paint. I decided to study graphic design in my hometown of Barcelona, and it immediately felt right and set the course for what followed.
2 / Please explain the site and its concept in a few words
Maki This site is about organizing the huge list of sessions The Lot have accumulated over the years, and making it available to the world.
Guillermo There was a tension between building a highly utilitarian website, a vast archive of music to explore, and creating something fun and expressive that reflects the vibrant community behind The Lot Radio. Hopefully, we struck a good balance between the two.
3 / What was the main inspiration - visual or thematic - that guided you in the process of this website? Please elaborate
Guillermo The Lot container, where the DJs are playing their sessions has a very iconic background, full of stickers. From the beginning we wanted to find opportunities to bring that underground energy to the website. The other inspiration was the aesthetic of electronic music equipment, like digital audio work stations, synthesizers, midi controllers…
4 / Share any tech details, special tools or web-design features you included, or any behind-the-scenes information.
Guillermo From a tech-standpoint, two special features to call out:
There’s a custom video player that collapses into a mini player to allow for uninterrupted video playback as you navigate the site. It includes; airplay support, queue management, volume persistence, and seamless switching between multiple live streams and video on demand.
We built a custom automated workflow that orchestrates the transcoding of video, selection of thumbnails, population of content in the CMS, and integrations with external services for track list identification. Usually within an hour of a show ending, it’s available to replay on demand with a full track list and a selection of thumbnails
5 / Walk us through the design process of the radio player / streamer. How did you approach the decision-making around this feature?
Guillermo It was clear from the beginning that from a UX perspective we needed to think about two main types of video recordings: the 24/7 live stream and the archive of past sessions. Our challenge was how to present both. When you land on the website, the homepage defaults to the live stream. As you scroll, it collapses into a mini player. As you browse and play past sessions, they seamlessly replace the live stream. At any moment, clicking the LIVE section in the navigation brings you back to what is happening right now.
6 / Apart from music, what would you say plays a significant role in the website?
Maki I think the overall aesthetic of the site, the neon purple color and the stickers really showcases the edginess of the brand.
Guillermo Each artist chose their portrait on the website. Those photographs show the wide range of artists that are playing at The Lot, each with their unique flavour and personality that is also reflected in their music choices.
7 / What web-design project are you working on currently?
Maki At Decimal, I’m currently working on several web projects, one is a website and rebranding for a law firm here in New York City, another is a micro site for Bloomingdale’s celebrating their new floor on 59th street. I am also supporting the design of a website for a German-based wellness spa, building prototypes and components.
Guillermo We’re currently working on several web projects—from a nonprofit advocating for AI ethics, to a brand-new real estate company, to an artist portfolio site. We try to maintain a healthy balance between corporate and non-commercial work.
Thank you so much Maki and Guillermo!
