branding, web design, web development
african american airlines
african american airlines is a conceptual, art-directed web experience celebrating black excellence under the bold mantra: "black people have always been fly." styled as passengers on an eternal flight, the project serves as a digital manifest of cultural icons, athletes, musicians, and leaders.
goal
the goal was to build a performant, interactive digital platform that seamlessly blends modern web architecture with a highly stylized, retro-futuristic aesthetic, while giving the client complete control over content and email marketing.
approach
the design draws heavily from mid-century aviation graphics, brutalist interfaces, and high-contrast newspaper halftones. rather than manually editing hundreds of cms-managed portraits, we engineered a custom html5 canvas image processing pipeline. this engine intercepts portraits via a proxy api, tints them with flight status colors, and dynamically renders a precise, retro halftone dot pattern over the image on the fly.
outcome
the result is an app like browsing experience with severe typographic contrasts and high fidelity interactive states. the dynamic halftone engine effortlessly composites high res multi up layouts for user downloads without any manual intervention. beyond the manifest hidden interactive elements like a peanut scanner game utilizing custom css filters, a custom passport creator, a test your knowledge game with leaderboard, and a community driven resources list all deepen the immersive eternal narrative of the flight.
the tech stack:
next.js, tailwindcss, payload cms, resend api, native html5 canvas api.
site: africanamericanairlines.com
instagram: instagram.com/aamericanair
x: x.com/aamericanair
