Designing a platform for journalism support in complex environments
Fixing Kosovo is a journalism support organization providing premium fixing services to international reporters working in Kosovo. Their work spans research, fact-checking, safety assessment, logistics, and multimedia production, enabling journalists to report accurately, responsibly, and with proper local context.
In environments shaped by post-war realities and political complexity, fixers play a critical role. They identify meaningful angles, connect journalists with key voices, navigate risk, and handle the groundwork that allows reporting to happen at all. Despite this, their contribution often remains invisible, even though it is foundational to the final story.
This project asked a precise design question: how do you build a platform that reflects the seriousness and complexity of this work without reducing it to corporate polish or neutral abstraction?
My role spanned brand identity, visual storytelling, UX design (drawing from patterns used in the Home Depot design system), and the implementation of a custom WordPress platform. The work needed to communicate credibility and trust, while remaining grounded in the lived realities of journalism on the ground.
Understanding the work
Fixers are local journalists, researchers, and producers who support international reporting by providing cultural context, access, verification, and safety insight. Their work is not auxiliary. It is structural.
The Fixing Kosovo platform needed to reflect that reality. It was not meant to persuade or campaign, but to establish authority, clarity, and confidence, both for journalists seeking support and for partners evaluating credibility.
Very early on, it became clear that visual neutrality would misrepresent the nature of the work.
When neutrality broke
At the beginning of the project, I explored three design directions. One of them followed a familiar, clean, corporate visual language. It was controlled, restrained, and technically sound.
In conversations with the client and my collaborator Ilir Gashi, who is also part of Fixing Kosovo, it became clear that this direction was fundamentally misaligned. Fixing work is rarely clean or orderly. It involves uncertainty, urgency, and decision-making under pressure. A polite visual language would have suggested distance rather than understanding.
We shifted toward a more direct and grounded approach. The design needed texture and presence. It needed to feel close to the work rather than removed from it. That decision, made early, shaped the tone of the entire platform.
At the same time, we were conscious of balance. The platform had to feel contemporary and confident without alienating journalists, partners, or potential funders. Every decision sat between urgency and trust.
Design direction: a newspaper, not a campaign site
Rather than borrowing from NGO or marketing aesthetics, I treated the platform as a digital newspaper.
Newspapers imply accountability, public record, and seriousness. They invite reading rather than browsing, and they frame stories as something that matters in the present. This framing aligned closely with Fixing Kosovo’s role as journalistic infrastructure rather than advocacy.
Visually, this translated into a strong grid, assertive typography, and a restrained but expressive color palette anchored by bold orange and yellow accents. These choices were not decorative. They were intended to slow the reader down, establish hierarchy, and signal importance without exaggeration.
Visual storytelling grounded in real people
The most impactful visual decision was to root the identity in original photography.
Most of the images used on the platform were taken by a local photographer in Kosovo, Sumcica. Rather than replacing these images with illustration or heavy visual effects, I worked directly with the photographs. Subtle graphic interventions were applied, adjusting contrast and thresholds, introducing controlled color accents, and aligning the images with the broader visual system.
This approach preserved authenticity while giving the platform a distinct visual signature. The images feel specific and owned, not generic or symbolic. More than any single layout decision, this choice defined the identity and gave the work its character.
Structuring the experience
From a UX perspective, the platform was designed around a story-first information architecture (leveraging learnings from the Gig Marketplace platform). Navigation prioritizes narratives, people, and context over organizational language or service listings.
Technically, I implemented a custom WordPress theme optimized for editorial flexibility and performance. The system supports multilingual publishing, custom search, and ongoing narrative development, while remaining fast and readable across devices.
These elements are not positioned as features. They are embedded in how the platform behaves: reliable, clear, and adaptable.
Collaboration and implementation
This project was deeply collaborative. I worked closely with journalists, writers, and photographers to ensure the design supported their work rather than shaping it artificially.
Design decisions were discussed in terms of consequence rather than preference. Each choice was evaluated against a simple standard: does this help the work be understood and taken seriously?
The implementation process was iterative, but always grounded in clarity and restraint rather than novelty.
Outcome
FixingKosovo.net launched as a platform that feels grounded, deliberate, and human. It communicates professionalism without distancing itself from the realities of journalism in complex environments.
The result is a digital presence that supports Fixing Kosovo’s role as a trusted partner for journalists, while clearly signaling the depth, rigor, and responsibility behind the services they provide.
Most importantly, it frames fixing not as a background task, but as essential journalistic infrastructure.