Translating a legendary vision to the web
There was no shortage of phenomenal design inspiration to look at for Marathon. Based on the original groundbreaking video game from 1994 that helped invent the first person shooter, reimagined for a modern era. Fantastic cinematic sequences developed by Michael Rigley and an art-style blending brutalism and cyberpunk, bright colors, glitches and negative space provided by the team at Bungie. It was a high bar, how do we maintain the groundbreaking look and feel when translated to web but still meet all standard web criteria?
— PROJECT NAME
"Alpha One"
— ROLE
Team Leadership
Creative Direction
Design Critique
Project Management
Cross-Functional Collaboration
— DATE
2023-2024
Bringing Bungie's Sci-Fi Game to the Web
As VP of Design and part of the project team at Rightpoint, I supported the end-to-end creative execution of MarathonTheGame.com, Bungie’s multi-phase reveal site for their highly anticipated sci-fi extraction shooter. While Bungie supplied the foundational art direction and brand identity, our team was responsible for building the full website from scratch including backend development and front-end implementation.
My role centered on guiding the visual articulation of Bungie’s style across all phases of the project; from the initial teaser and countdown experience to the full launch site. I participated in internal reviews, provided ongoing design fidelity feedback, and ensured our implementation stayed true to the game’s richly stylized aesthetic. Working closely with front-end developers and creative leads, I helped translate Bungie’s stunning in-game visuals and narrative tone into a performant, cinematic web experience.
- - Oversaw visual implementation of Bungie’s supplied brand and art direction across multiple site phases
- - Participated in weekly internal reviews, providing guidance on design fidelity, layout, motion, and transitions
- - Collaborated cross-functionally to maintain creative alignment through teaser, countdown, and full launch
- - Helped translate complex, stylized game aesthetics into a responsive and performant web experience
- - Ensured consistent execution across all site components, including mobile, desktop, and cinematic elements
The site was built using a modern React/Next.js framework and evolved through multiple launches; each designed to build anticipation while preserving brand consistency and mystery. From kinetic motion elements to immersive parallax sections, we helped establish a digital presence that matched the ambition and visual identity of the upcoming game title.
MarathonTheGame.com was one of those rare projects where the art direction already felt iconic from day one. My job was to help ensure the translation to web honored that. From countdown to reveal, our work helped build momentum and mystery without ever breaking the spell.
Cinematic surveillance
Bungie’s Marathon site establishes its tone with immediate restraint and authority. It rejects the conventions of typical game marketing in favor of a stark, cinematic experience that immerses the viewer in a post-human, sci-fi mythos. The site launches full-frame; no nav, no chrome, no noise just the logo floating over ambient motion, set against void-black backgrounds that feel more like a surveillance interface than a website.
Simple grid
Its grid system is unapologetically simple: centered, full-bleed sections with generous spacing and minimal scaffolding, designed to let tension build slowly. The entire layout operates more like a controlled descent than a scroll; a purposeful vertical journey.
Techno type
Typography does a lot of heavy lifting in this world. The site uses brutalist, industrial sans-serifs, often set in uppercase to reinforce a sense of uniformity and authority. The weight, spacing, and hierarchy of the type are calculated to create a feeling of both institutional coldness and cryptic allure.
Classified lore
There’s no dense copy or lore dumps; instead, text blocks hover mid-screen like warning labels or classified briefings set in mono or techno variants that imply AI authorship. Combined with the vertical pacing and scroll gating, the overall experience feels like you’re interfacing with a system, not reading a story.
Punch of color
Color is used like a weapon. The palette is narrow but jarring: high-contrast neons, acidic green, electric blue, warning red, synthetic magenta laid hard against deep-space blacks and rare moments of gradient fog. These tones aren’t aesthetic fluff; they echo the game’s deeper themes of control, threat, and synthetic life. Visual motifs like radial tech overlays, glitch artifacts, distorted icons, and holographic blurs punctuate the experience, often hovering near the edge of perception. These layered graphics create a visual atmosphere that feels claustrophobic and surveilled, matching the game’s narrative tone of AI dominance and fractured identity.
Deliberate motion
Motion throughout the site is spare but surgically precise. Scroll transitions fade in content at deliberate intervals, with slight scale shifts and timed reveals that mirror the behavior of a tactical HUD. Hover states are quiet, subtle microinteractions that imply data input rather than traditional button behavior.
Narrative motion
There’s no flashy loading animation or parallax-for-parallax’s-sake. Instead, motion serves narrative tension: everything loads a little too slowly, fades in just a little too ominously, reinforcing that something is being held back. The restraint in animation design mirrors the gameplay’s slow-burn reveal and world-building mystery.
Minimal is just the surface
The site architecture was built to support phased storytelling. The initial teaser was minimalist iconography, logo, and environment alone. The countdown phase added visual pressure with ticking motion and gated media. The current site integrates lore, world hints, and stylized media while preserving the core aesthetic system. Each version retained the same design DNA, thanks to a component-based front-end built in React/Next.js with a flexible, headless CMS to support timed content drops and progressive reveals. The result is an experience that doesn’t just market a game but it inducts the user into its universe, using every visual, interaction, and pacing cue to suggest that what you’re seeing is only the surface.
