Designing a Digital Home for Student Journalism

In 2019, I was active in Magazinc!, a student media community at Telkom University. By then, having a dedicated website had become almost expected among student organizations, and we already had an online presence through our existing channels. The problem was that those channels weren’t sufficient for everything we needed to communicate as a media organization. At first, my reasoning was almost embarrassingly simple. If other student organizations could have a dedicated website alongside their existing channels, why shouldn’t we have one too?

As I thought more deeply about the problem, however, I realized that the absence of a website exposed a limitation in how we were publishing journalism. Our primary publication format was the magazine, which worked well for stories that remained relevant over a longer period. Journalism doesn’t always work on that timeline, though. Some stories matter because they are happening now, and waiting for the next magazine issue could mean missing the moment entirely. We already had Instagram, but I didn’t consider it sufficient for reporting a proper news story or preserving that story for future readers.

That made the website more than another digital channel. I saw it as an extension of our journalism rather than a replacement for the magazine. The medium should support what we wanted to communicate instead of limiting what we could communicate to whichever medium we happened to have.

Designing Beyond the Publication

Another problem became apparent as I considered what the website could provide more broadly. Where should our previous publications live and remain accessible? A magazine can be preserved physically, but its accessibility remains limited. A website could provide a public archive where our stories remained searchable and accessible long after their original publication window had passed. This wasn’t necessarily the primary reason for building the platform, but it gave the project a more lasting and meaningful purpose.

I also approached the project with a particular attitude toward design research. As university students, I didn’t think we should make decisions based entirely on assumptions, especially when we had the opportunity to investigate the problem properly. Simply following what other student organizations were doing would have produced a reasonable website, but I wanted the project to achieve something more substantial.

My friend and I therefore pursued two outcomes at the same time. We wanted to create a practical design solution that could become a foundation for Magazinc!, while also turning the process into a research publication. In the end, we achieved both. The project produced a functional HTML prototype that could be developed into a working frontend, while the research itself was successfully published as an academic paper.

That combination made the project particularly meaningful to us because the work could function as both a design artifact, and documented evidence of our approach.

Preserving What Already Belonged to Us

One of the decisions I made was to preserve the existing identity of Magazinc! rather than create an entirely new visual direction for the website. The organization’s light blue had already become strongly associated with its publications and social media presence. Even our uniform reinforced that association through its dark blue color, prominent white PRESS lettering, and light blue Magazinc! logo.

There was therefore little reason to replace an identity that already worked effectively. The website needed to establish a digital presence for Magazinc!, not make people wonder whether they were looking at an entirely different organization altogether. Maintaining that visual association also helped the website feel like another connected part of the publication ecosystem we had already built together.

The same thinking applied to Bebas Berisik, Magazinc!’s own tagline and internal jargon. The phrase already carried a particular meaning among its members, with its underlying spirit representing expressive freedom and the character of Magazinc! itself. As someone involved in the organization and familiar with its journalistic culture, I saw no reason to separate the website from that identity. The platform needed to feel like an extension of Magazinc!, rather than becoming another generic news portal that could belong to any organization.

The platform could therefore expand what Magazinc! was capable of doing without changing what Magazinc! fundamentally was. The magazine could remain an important part of the organization, while the website could support stories that required immediacy, permanence, or broader accessibility.

A Prototype With a Purpose

I led the small team behind the project as the more experienced researcher and the person who originally proposed the idea. We divided the research tasks between us and gathered much of the data together, while I provided direction on what needed to be investigated next. I handled the prototype development myself and translated the research findings into a design that could realistically be developed into a working website.

At the time, I deliberately stopped at that point. My priorities were producing the research publication and creating a sufficiently complete prototype that future members could develop if they wanted to. I didn’t invest heavily in building a CMS or planning the complete technical infrastructure because those decisions could be left to whoever eventually took responsibility for the community.

From the organization’s perspective, the project didn’t develop much further. As far as I know, Magazinc! never ended up operating a website based on the work we produced. That is indeed disappointing to some degree, but it doesn’t make the project unsuccessful from my perspective. My friend and I had defined what we wanted to accomplish, and we accomplished both objectives.

If I were doing the project today, I would approach the implementation differently overall. I would probably build the functional CMS myself and conduct more extensive research specifically around the website as a product and platform. I would also push the design further so that the platform could establish a stronger distinction from the other student media maintained across the university at the time.

The fundamental reasoning, however, remains relevant to me. As a designer and someone with a bit of background in journalism, I don’t think the medium should dictate the boundaries of the work. A story with a short publication window may require immediate reporting, while another story may deserve to remain accessible for years. A magazine, social media post, and website can each serve different parts of that process.

That was ultimately what I was trying to solve with Magazinc!. The question wasn’t: Should we abandon the magazine and migrate to website? It was how we could give our journalism another medium that better served stories that the magazine couldn’t accommodate. For me, that is where the design process became meaningful, because the solution emerged from understanding what the organization and its journalism actually needed rather than simply reproducing what everyone else was already doing.