Product
Independence
An interactive editorial project created for the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s Independence, connecting 30 defining modern events with meaningful parallels from the country’s history.
Independence is an interactive editorial project created by DigitalTouch for the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s Independence. It presents 30 defining events from the country’s modern history and connects each one with a meaningful historical parallel.
The project was designed as an experience to explore rather than an article to read from beginning to end. Politics, sport, culture, medicine, science, technology, and other areas of national life come together in a visual narrative showing how contemporary events can resonate with earlier moments in Ukrainian history.
Thirty years through thirty defining events
An anniversary project about a country cannot include everything. The editorial challenge is to build a meaningful path through an enormous amount of history without presenting the selection as a complete account.
Independence uses 30 events as entry points into the years following the declaration of independence in 1991. Each event represents a wider story about the country’s political development, culture, achievements, challenges, and changing place in the world.
The format gives every selected event enough space to stand on its own while preserving its connection to the broader timeline. Users can browse the collection, move between categories, and explore the stories that interest them instead of following one mandatory linear route.
Modern events in a deeper historical context
The distinctive idea behind the project is the pairing of contemporary milestones with historical analogues. A modern event is not presented as an isolated card on a timeline; it opens a second perspective connected to an earlier period.
The comparison does not imply that two moments are identical. Its purpose is to reveal recurring themes, contrasts, continuities, and changes across different eras. This structure encourages users to think about modern Ukraine as part of a much longer historical narrative.
Every pair therefore contains two editorial layers:
- a significant event from the period of independence;
- a related episode from earlier Ukrainian history;
- the context needed to understand each story;
- a thematic connection that makes the comparison meaningful;
- visual material supporting exploration and recognition.
This paired model transforms the project from a commemorative list into an interactive way of reading history.
Editorial storytelling designed for exploration
Long-form historical material creates a difficult interface problem. If every story appears on one page, the project becomes exhausting. If the content is reduced too aggressively, it loses meaning. Independence needed to preserve editorial depth while remaining inviting and easy to navigate.
The experience is organized around discrete, browsable story units. Users can understand the overall concept quickly and then choose how deeply to explore. Visual hierarchy separates dates, subjects, categories, modern events, and historical parallels without making the interface feel like a database.
The product combines several reading behaviours:
- scanning the complete collection of events;
- following the modern historical timeline;
- entering a specific story from a visual preview;
- switching attention between an event and its analogue;
- browsing themes such as politics, sport, art, medicine, science, and technology;
- returning to the wider collection without losing context.
This makes interaction design part of the editorial method. Navigation determines how readers discover relationships between stories and how the project’s central idea becomes understandable.
A structured content model behind the narrative
Although the result feels like a visual special project, it depends on structured editorial data. Each item needs a consistent relationship between its modern event, historical counterpart, theme, chronology, text, and media.
The content foundation supports:
- 30 primary events from independent Ukraine;
- 30 connected historical analogues;
- thematic classification across different fields;
- dates and chronological context;
- paired narratives and supporting media;
- consistent presentation across the complete project.
Treating these elements as structured records rather than manually assembled pages improves consistency and makes the full experience easier to maintain. It also allows the interface to reuse common interaction patterns while each story retains distinct editorial content.
WordPress and custom interactive web delivery
The project uses WordPress, PHP, and MySQL as its content and server-side foundation. This gives editors a manageable way to organize a large set of interconnected historical materials.
The front end was delivered with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, and jQuery. These technologies support the custom browsing experience, responsive layouts, navigation states, and transitions connecting the project’s story units. Apache and Nginx form part of the recorded web-delivery infrastructure.
WordPress provides editorial control, but the public experience is not presented like a conventional blog. The implementation turns CMS-managed material into a purpose-built interactive narrative with its own visual language and navigation model.
Responsive access to a content-rich project
A project with dense text, historical imagery, navigation, and paired content must remain understandable across different screen sizes. Responsive delivery involves more than stacking desktop sections vertically.
On smaller screens, reading order and interaction priorities become especially important. Event identity, chronology, the relationship with the historical analogue, and navigation back to the collection all need to remain clear within limited space.
The front-end structure was built to preserve the editorial relationship between paired stories while adapting the presentation for desktop and mobile browsing.
A DigitalTouch editorial product
Independence demonstrates DigitalTouch’s ability to create digital products at the intersection of technology, editorial thinking, visual communication, and cultural context.
The central achievement is not simply placing historical text online. It is the transformation of a large subject into a coherent interactive system: a clear concept, structured content, reusable presentation, meaningful navigation, and enough flexibility for users to create their own path through the material.
The project also shows how conventional web technologies can support a distinctive experience when architecture and interface are shaped around the story rather than around a generic template.
Historical project, still available online
Independence was created in the context of the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s Independence in 2021. It remains a historical DigitalTouch product documenting that editorial and technical work.
The interactive project is available at Independence.com.ua.
The challenge
Three decades of independence contain political turning points, cultural achievements, scientific progress, sporting moments, social change, and national challenges. The project needed to transform that scale into a coherent digital narrative without reducing it to a chronological list or an overwhelmingly long article. Every event also needed to connect with a historical analogue in a format that encouraged exploration and comparison.
What was built
DigitalTouch created an interactive special project built around 30 significant events from independent Ukraine. Each modern milestone is paired with a related historical episode, allowing users to move between the contemporary story and its broader context. The experience organizes material across politics, sport, art, medicine, science, technology, and other areas of national life in a browsable visual format.
Technical approach
The project combines WordPress and a PHP/MySQL content foundation with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, and jQuery on the front end. Structured editorial records connect each modern event with its historical analogue, thematic category, media, and supporting narrative. Apache and Nginx form part of the delivery stack, while responsive interaction turns a large body of historical material into an accessible experience across devices.
DigitalTouch’s role
Interactive special-project delivery by DigitalTouch
Technologies
- PHP
- MySQL
- WordPress
- Apache
- Nginx
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
- Bootstrap
- jQuery
Architecture highlights
- Interactive editorial storytelling
- Event timelines paired with historical analogues
- Browsable special-project experience