Hespress Website Redesign : UI, UX, Architecture

The challenge

Hespress’s visual identity had barely changed for the better part of a decade, the same blue masthead, the same dense three-column layout, serving millions of daily readers deeply habituated to that look. A modernization risked breaking trust with an audience who came back daily precisely because the site felt familiar. The challenge wasn’t designing something better, it was designing something better that didn’t feel like a different site.

The approach

I chose to preserve two things deliberately: the core blue brand identity, and the underlying content architecture readers already knew how to navigate (the three-column layout, the category structure, the running headline list), while modernizing almost everything else around them. I also added a reading-comfort feature based on actual site behavior: Hespress readers have unusually long session times, so I built in a dark mode as a real UX response to that, not a cosmetic extra. The bigger call was how to launch. Rather than a blind full cutover or a slow phased rollout, I shipped the new design to 100% of traffic with a built-in reversion option, any reader could switch back to the old design with one click. That let me launch decisively while still measuring, honestly, whether the redesign was actually landing or just being tolerated. I let the data answer that question instead of assuming it.

The execution

1. 01Designed the full UI/UX myself in Figma, then handed the finished project to a developer for implementation
2. 02Preserved the brand’s blue identity while modernizing the masthead, simplifying the logo, and introducing a dark mode alongside it
3. 03Rebuilt the homepage into a much richer content system: a dedicated video grid, a recurring reader poll with a full archive, a distinctly branded social-video format built for sharing rather than on-site viewing, a trending-columnists module, a guest-contributor tribune separate from staff columnists, live “most commented” and “most viewed” modules, and native apps across Google Play, the App Store, and Huawei AppGallery
4. 04Shipped as a full launch with a user-facing toggle to revert to the old design, turning the launch itself into a live, measurable test of reader acceptance
5. 05Removed the reversion option permanently once the data showed the redesign had won readers over