Kayhan Atamyildiz Kayhan Atamyildiz Weaving copy, photography, and motion into bespoke editorial experiences — from a Webby-nominated oral history to templates producers can run themselves.
Award-nominated features built beyond the standard grid — and a system of scalable templates that let producers reuse complex layouts on their own
Most of this work exists to extend the shows themselves — giving curious viewers somewhere to go deeper, and keeping fans engaged between episodes with supplementary content. But the hard part isn't making one beautiful feature — it's that bespoke features don't scale. A digital editorial team ships constantly; a design that needs a designer for every story becomes a bottleneck. So the work ran on two tracks: flagship features that pushed the craft, and reusable templates that let producers publish rich layouts without one.
This mobile-first feature offers an in-depth glimpse into the artisans and professionals behind the fashion industry’s most iconic figures. I directed the visual strategy to ensure the captivating photography and video narratives remained the focal point, creating a seamless experience across every screen size.
A collaborative exploration of American history through the objects that shaped it. I created a clean, evocative layout where historical artifacts—from seed chests to Quaker cookbooks—are presented as the primary drivers of the narrative.
Tasked with creating a reusable design system for History Channel’s presidential documentaries, I developed an elegant, information-dense template. This framework was designed to scale across multiple series, providing a consistent and educational companion for viewers.
This feature tells the stories of five Black Americans whose killings galvanized the civil rights movement — subject matter that could easily read as purely tragic. The real challenge was tonal: giving the history the gravity it deserved while still leaving readers with a sense of hope and momentum. I designed custom illustrations for each entry, including a hanging rope that transforms into peace doves, and carried the same motif into every title treatment — archival photography paired with modern typography, so the design could hold both the weight of the history and the hope of what it sparked.
Tradeoff → Leaning into hope and dignity in the graphics meant softening some of the visual tone. I trusted the archival photography and reporting to carry the full weight of the violence, so the illustrations could carry the reader toward resilience instead.
I led the creative and design direction for this nine-part series, combining first-hand accounts from the President with immersive, full-width photography. By blending a premium editorial aesthetic with a fluid digital interface, I created a definitive historical record.
For the Kings of Pain digital feature, I provided the creative direction and developed a custom code template. This empowered content producers to independently manage and reuse complex layouts for a comprehensive, science-led pain index.
Tradeoff → A reusable template can't be as bespoke as a one-off. I traded a little per-story uniqueness for layouts the content producers could ship without me — the right call at publishing scale.
I directed the design for this retrospective of the hit survival series, focusing on a clear, data-informed hierarchy to showcase the winners of every season. My role involved bridging the gap between design and production, ensuring a smooth integration into the site’s CMS.
The original brief was a Word doc with 12 bullet-point quotes, paired one-for-one with a photo — functional, but flat. I saw an opportunity to make it more entertaining: a numbered countdown format, each quote set in bold display typography against full character photography, turning a simple list into something that feels like a highlight reel.
Car Week is HISTORY's week of programming dedicated entirely to cars — every network show that week tied into it. The hub needed to pull together everything into one place: stories, facts, and video collections. I designed a grid-based, playful layout with stylized titles, giving fans a fun way to browse the full lineup instead of a flat list of links.
Alongside the systematic, structured interface work, these projects gave me permission to think like a storyteller instead of a system architect. Illustration, typography, photography, and video — stretching those muscles pushed my creative limits in ways that designing another component never would