The story behind our Webby-nominated website

Our website has been nominated for the best science website at the Webby Awards—hailed the “internet’s highest honor” by The New York Times.

We make discoveries in physics and mathematics, and our website is how we deliver them. It’s built on the principles of simplicity, clarity and modularity.

Simplicity is in high demand, but hard to define. One way to achieve it is through constraints. All our copy is written in units of 140 characters: one unit for listing papers, events and perspectives; two units for titlegraphs at the top of each page; and eight for detailed summaries of news and events. Speed feels like simplicity, and our site is one of the fastest.

Our breakthroughs can seem complex, so we work hard to describe them clearly. We summarise every paper and event in a simple sentence, and explain each of our research projects and themes in plain English of uniform length.

Modularity allows us to create and adapt content quickly. Our entire site is organised around the concept of Lego-like building blocks of images and text. To combine these components on a recursively divisible grid, we even had to develop new mathematics.

We believe that communicating our discoveries is as important as making them. Please vote for us at the Webby Awards.