Spikes Magazine
A look at my work on Spikes Magazine, the digital editorial platform for World Athletics — blending long-form storytelling, athlete profiles and culture-led coverage of the global athletics scene.
Building a Digital Home for Global Athletics Culture
Spikes Magazine is the editorial and culture-led publication of World Athletics (formerly the IAAF), created to explore the people, stories and personalities behind the sport — beyond just results and competition tables. It blends long-form writing, interviews, photography and visual storytelling across track & field, road running and global athletics culture.
I worked on Spikes during my time as an engineer at Haymarket, contributing to the front-end build and content delivery platform that powered the magazine online.
What I Worked On
Built and refined the front-end experience for a modern editorial platform — focusing on layout, readability, performance and visual impact.
Supported article templates, feature layouts and editorial presentation, ensuring long-form content, interviews and photography were displayed cleanly and consistently across devices.
Worked closely with designers, editors and product stakeholders to translate creative direction into working production UI.
Helped integrate Spikes into the wider World Athletics digital ecosystem, ensuring consistency of identity and technical alignment with other World Athletics platforms.
Ensured the site delivered fast, responsive and accessible experiences for global readers across mobile and desktop.
Why This Project Was Special
Spikes was very different from the World Athletics live-results platforms or enterprise systems — it was about storytelling, culture and personality. It explored athletes as people, not just competitors. Working on it gave me exposure to:
Editorial workflows
Long-form publishing
Media-focused UI design
Content modelling and CMS-driven delivery
Close collaboration with writers, editors and designers
This gave journalists and editors the flexibility to move fast while keeping the platform technically stable and maintainable.
It balanced creative freedom with technical discipline, and that contrast sharpened my instincts for both engineering and product thinking.
Please see the work I did on World Athletics below:
