Nazlı Ercan and Eric Li Unveil Vision for CreativeX Website Redesign: An Infinite Canvas for Interdisciplinary Exploration

Nazlı Ercan, the senior designer at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, who is also known for her impactful tenure as Design Director for The Brooklyn Rail, is spearheading a significant redesign of the CreativeX website. Collaborating with long-time design partner Eric Li, Ercan aims to transform the digital platform into a dynamic, open-ended experience that more effectively reflects the interdisciplinary spirit of CreativeX, a unique collective based at Princeton University.

Ercan’s extensive portfolio spans both print and digital realms, demonstrating a versatile approach that integrates art, culture, and publishing. Her work with prestigious institutions such as the Carnegie Museum of Art, OMA New York, David Zwirner, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she contributed to exhibition graphics for leading contemporary artists like Pope.L, underscores her deep expertise.

At the Walker Art Center, she designed exhibition graphics and catalogs for high-profile shows like "Kandis Williams: A Surface" and developed visual identities for major reinstallations experienced by hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.

Her leadership as Design Director for The Brooklyn Rail was another way to hone her editorial design and project management skills in a fast-paced environment. Ercan’s work has also been recognized through team awards, including Silver for the Whitney Biennial 2022 Brand at the New York Design Awards, and she is a recognized voice in arts education, serving as a guest critic and speaker at institutions including Yale and Princeton, her alma mater.

The opportunity to redesign the CreativeX website came as a natural extension of Ercan’s ongoing connections within the Princeton design community, where she graduated in 2017.

Ercan explains: "After graduating from Princeton, I made a conscious effort to remain involved with the design community there, which has always been a rich environment for interdisciplinary collaboration and creative exchange."

She adds: "Eric Li, a longtime friend and collaborator, and I had previously worked together alongside our former professor David Reinfurt on a number of projects. Because of these ongoing connections and shared interests, a group of faculty approached us to develop the visual identity and website for CreativeX—a cross-disciplinary collective that brings together artists, scientists, and engineers at Princeton."

This collaboration, she noted, felt like a natural fit for their shared interest in design as a tool for research and experimentation.

When CreativeX first launched in 2022, its original design featured a lightweight, flexible layout with floating rectangles on the homepage, a visual nod to the collective’s dot-based logo and its dynamically arranged members. However, as CreativeX expanded its projects and membership, this design began to reveal its limitations.

Ercan highlighted the issues: "The floating boxes started to overlap and crowd each other, especially on larger desktop screens, making the experience visually cluttered and difficult to navigate. On mobile devices, these navigation challenges became even more pronounced, frustrating users."

The core issue, she explained, was the fixed width and height of the homepage, which lacked the spatial flexibility needed for ever-growing content.

The collaboration with Eric Li is integral to this redesign, stemming from years of shared belief in graphic design as an intellectual and critical practice rather than merely a decorative one. "Eric and I have been collaborating for years, beginning during our time at Princeton," Ercan stated.

"We share a deep belief that graphic design can be an intellectual and critical practice rather than just a decorative one... Working together on CreativeX was a natural fit because we both strongly align with the collective’s core values: collaboration, experimentation, and crossing disciplinary boundaries."

The cornerstone of their redesign strategy is to transform the homepage into an "infinite canvas." Ercan elaborated on their plans: "Our biggest update is to expand the homepage into an infinite canvas, removing the fixed boundaries. Instead of shrinking content or limiting the number of blocks, we’re allowing these elements to move freely beyond the screen edges, floating in and out of view to create a more fluid and exploratory experience."

This approach, while carefully avoiding horizontal scrolling for usability, aims to foster non-linear navigation, presenting a unique challenge for mobile adaptation that seeks to avoid imposing a traditional hierarchical structure.

Despite the significant technical evolution, Ercan and Li are committed to preserving the fundamental spirit of the original design.

"We are committed to preserving the original concept of free-floating content tied to the dot-based logo, as it effectively embodies CreativeX’s decentralized and collaborative structure," Ercan affirmed. This continuity is especially meaningful, given their role as the original designers, building on a foundation they deeply care about.

Ultimately, the redesign aims for more than just a functional update; it seeks to create a rich, interconnected experience. "Above all, we want the website to communicate the rich interconnectivity and broad range of CreativeX projects," Ercan concluded.

"The goal isn’t just to display content but to create a living network—a visual and conceptual map that highlights relationships between ideas, people, and disciplines. We want the interface to encourage users to jump fluidly across different fields, uncovering unexpected connections between projects that may initially seem unrelated."

The enhanced CreativeX website promises to be a digital testament to cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaborative discovery.