Circular Economy News Designing a circular economy news website

A news platform for circular economy professionals

I designed the Kiertotalouden uutispalvelu news website for Finland's circular economy professionals. By combining client input with benchmarking insights, I created a modern, traditional-style news platform with a subscription model for paid content. The project balanced creative freedom with user-focused design and delivered a polished product that exceeded client expectations.

News experience with subscription and paywall

The brief was to design and build a news website for Kiertotalouden uutispalvelu — independent media focused on Finland's transformation toward a carbon-neutral circular economy. The site needed to serve businesses, researchers, and policymakers with a traditional news experience and modern features such as subscription-based paid content.

It was my first news website project. The client provided a few key requirements, but I had significant creative freedom in both visual design and user experience.

Workshop, benchmarks, and UI in Sketch

The project began with a client workshop to refine the vision and clarify expectations. That session set the direction for the site and aligned everyone on essential features, including:

• A traditional news site layout.
• Subscription-based content with a paywall mechanism.

After the workshop, I benchmarked news websites and circular economy platforms to identify industry standards and design inspiration.

With a clear picture of functionality and visual requirements, I skipped wireframes and moved straight to UI layout in Sketch. The design work included:

• Three color variations for the theme, emphasizing minimalism and functionality.
• Letting the client choose a primary color-driven palette for CTAs, ads, pagination, and category highlights.
• Designing key layouts: homepage, category pages, article pages with comments, search results, and login/sign-up.

A traditional news feel with a modern stack

The final site matched the client's vision: the look and feel of a traditional news platform with a modern, functional design. The subscription model was integrated to support premium content access.

The client was especially happy with the clean, professional layouts and navigation that fit a circular economy-focused audience.

The project was straightforward but deeply satisfying — creative freedom within clear functional goals, and stronger expertise in tailored experiences for specialized audiences.