How I designed the Academy of Scoring Arts website around community, not content

People don’t buy products from companies they don’t trust. That might sound obvious, but it’s remarkable how many technical websites expect visitors to decode specifications, compare unfamiliar part numbers, and somehow arrive at the right decision on their own.

Creative organisations often believe their work speaks for itself. Sometimes it does. More often, people need to understand why they should become part of it before they’ll invest their time, money, or attention. That’s the idea behind the work I did for the Academy of Scoring Arts.

Membership is about belonging

The Academy of Scoring Arts is an online community for composers, arrangers, and orchestrators. Members gain access to workshops, interviews, educational videos, and a growing library of resources designed to help them develop their craft.

At first glance, it looked like a straightforward content project. There were hundreds of videos to organise, pages to redesign, and information to make easier to find. But that wasn’t what interested me. The real challenge wasn’t helping people discover videos. It was helping them understand why they should become members in the first place.

Looking beyond the content

One assumption changed almost immediately. I thought I was designing a website for an educational platform. I quickly realised I was designing for a community. That’s an important difference.

People don’t join organisations because they contain lots of content. They join because they want to feel connected to people who share their ambitions, interests, and experience.Once I understood that, the design became much clearer.

Instead of asking, “How do we organise hundreds of videos?” I started asking, “How do we make people want to belong here?” That single change influenced every decision that followed.

Designing a feeling, not a feature list

The visual identity became one of the most enjoyable parts of the project. My first ideas explored music itself. I looked at notation, instruments, rhythm, and composition, but none of those ideas felt distinctive enough. Then I stepped back. The Academy wasn’t really about music. It was about the people who make it.

I began exploring abstract graphics inspired by modernist posters and album covers, experimenting with shape, colour, and composition to create something that felt creative without becoming predictable. After dozens of sketches and banner concepts, a visual language emerged that reflected collaboration, conversation, and shared creativity rather than musical clichés.

Typography became equally important. Composers care about detail. They notice rhythm, proportion, and structure. The typography needed to feel confident and editorial, giving the Academy a stronger personality while allowing the content to remain the focus. Every decision had the same objective. To make the Academy feel like somewhere creative people wanted to spend their time.

What I learned

This project reminded me that membership organisations rarely sell content. They sell belonging. Videos, articles, events, and resources all matter, but they’re evidence of something bigger. People are joining a community because they want to learn alongside people like themselves.

Good design helps communicate that feeling before someone has watched a single video or attended a single event. I think that’s one of the most overlooked jobs a website can do.

See the finished project

The finished Academy of Scoring Arts website combines editorial typography, bold graphics, thoughtful content design, and a clear membership journey to help the organisation communicate the value of belonging as well as learning. Editorial design has always fascinated me because magazines don’t just organise information. They create anticipation and discovery, and have rhythm, which is exactly what I want members to experience as they explored the Academy of Scoring Arts website.

Take a look at the finished Academy of Scoring Arts website and explore my portfolio case study to see how those ideas came together.

Related reading

• My Academy of Scoring Arts portfolio page
• A bold new website for the Academy of Scoring Arts
• Designing banners for the Academy of Scoring Arts
• Design a new website or product