Creative Time HQ
A digital home for public art
The ask
For decades, Creative Time has brought ambitious, politically engaged public art into everyday spaces, reaching audiences who weren’t necessarily looking for it.
CTHQ, its permanent home in New York, extends that mission into a physical space for programming, community, and cultural discourse. The digital platform needed to do the same, not just document the work, but carry its weight.
The brief came with clarity and conviction. Creative Time has a strong in-house team across design and storytelling, supported by established brand guidelines. The team wasn’t looking to be redefined. They were looking for a partner who could listen closely and build with intention.
Mobile screenshots of CTHQ website
The challenge
The challenge
This project demanded precision on multiple fronts. Creative Time’s brand lives at the intersection of art and political urgency — opinionated, not easily replicated. The organization’s guidelines weren’t suggestions. Working within them while still producing something that functioned well as a digital platform required real creative discipline.
At the same time, CTHQ is many things at once: a venue, an archive, a publishing platform, and a hub for live programming. Translating that into a digital experience meant constantly making editorial decisions about hierarchy, pacing, and clarity.
Equally important was the collaboration itself. We worked alongside a highly engaged internal team with a clear point of view. The role wasn’t to lead or override; it was to provide structure, make smart decisions, and uphold the integrity of the work.
The work
The work
We worked directly with Creative Time’s curators, graphic designers, and storytelling team from the start, treating their assets, copy, and visual direction as the foundation. Our role was structural. We defined the information architecture, designed interaction patterns, and built a CMS and frontend that could support rich, multimedia storytelling without compromising performance.
The platform needed to serve multiple audiences at once: donors, artists, collaborators, and the broader public. We built clear pathways for each, without fragmenting the experience into separate systems or silos.
WordPress gave the team full editorial control post-launch, built to their workflow rather than a generic template. Plus, the project's success led to additional work with Creative Time, including a Digital Reader for an annual flagship event.
The result
- ~3 month delivery timeline
- Custom WordPress theme + CMS
- Multimedia-first architecture
We launched a platform that gives CTHQ a clear digital presence equal to its physical space, supporting programming, archives, and ongoing discourse. The site reflects Creative Time’s voice and authority, while giving its team the flexibility to publish, adapt, and grow the platform over time.