Custom Website & Web Application
Barrier Breakers
An editorial website that celebrates record-setting open-water swims, with an interactive records timeline and a secure way for anyone to nominate a swimmer.
Category
Custom Website & Web Application
Status
Live
Project Type
Client Project
A Closer Look
Hover over each screen to explore the full page.
Homepage
Records timeline
Story page
Nomination form
The Business
Barrier Breakers recognizes extraordinary swims that have expanded what’s possible in open water. The website has two jobs: tell these swimmers’ stories in a way that does them justice, and give the organization a dependable way to collect nominations for new swims.
The Challenge
A site like this is easy to get wrong in either direction. A plain list of records doesn’t show why these swims matter, and a beautiful site that’s hard to keep up to date doesn’t last. Nominations add another layer. They include personal details and photos, so they had to reach the team reliably without ever showing up on the public site, and without opening the door to spam.
Goals
Give each swim the weight of an editorial story
Make a growing list of records easy to browse by category
Let anyone nominate a swimmer in a few minutes
Keep nomination details private and block spam
Work just as well on a phone as on a desktop
Be easy to find in search and easy to share
What We Built
We designed and built a custom website with a magazine-style feel: large photography, bold type, and long-form story pages like the Barrier Breaker Spotlight on Gertrude Ederle. Under the design is a custom web application. Swim records live in a database and appear on an interactive timeline that visitors can filter by category. Nominations go through a form that checks every entry twice, once in the browser and again on the server, and are emailed straight to the team rather than stored on the site.
Editorial story pages built around large photography
Interactive records timeline with category filters and a swipeable view on phones
Nomination form with photo uploads, resized in the browser before sending
Nominations emailed directly to the team, never published or stored on the site
Spam protection and submission limits
Search-friendly pages, with a share image generated for each swimmer
Motion that respects visitors’ reduced-motion settings
Barrier Breakers now has a website that matches the significance of the swims it recognizes. Visitors can explore records and stories on any device, and nominations arrive in the team’s inbox, photos included, without those details ever appearing on the public site.
The Result
Services behind this project: Business Websites · Custom Web Applications