The power of digital storytelling or how to tell the story without words.

At Noomo, we help clients tell their stories through immersive websites and interactive event experiences, blending 3D, motion, and bold brand activations to create moments that connect and inspire. In this article, we will share insights and lessons learned along the way.

Why storytelling matters.

Storytelling is how we connect as humans. It’s how we share experiences, emotions, and values. For brands, storytelling is what makes them memorable and engaging, connects them with their audience, and drives sales.

A great story answers some important questions:

• What does this brand stand for?
• What makes it unique?
• What makes it memorable and worth engaging with?

In the digital world, storytelling isn’t just about words. It’s about creating multi-dimensional experiences combining visuals, animations, 3D, and interactivity. It’s about bringing the audience into the story so they feel they’re a part of it.

Many companies come to us with a strong brand and a great story, but their story is often disconnected from their website. Nowadays, when most interactions between a brand and its customers happen online, digital presence and storytelling are at the core of a brand’s identity.

There are many great resources and books about storytelling, such as Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller, but how can storytelling be effectively translated into digital experiences?

At Noomo, we follow these steps to ensure the story is at the heart of the website or digital experience:

1. Discovery Phase

The foundation of every great digital experience is a deep understanding of the brand’s story. That’s why we always start with the discovery phase, where, along with research, we conduct a design workshop or a series of workshops (when we need insights from different teams — marketing, sales, product, etc.). This helps ensure all stakeholders are aligned on goals, shapes the story we want to tell, and uncovers what makes the brand unique and special. This core story is what we then translate into the website.

For example, when we worked on the website for the amazing Jasmina Denner — a writer, fencer, investor, and just an incredible woman — the discovery phase was key to shaping the final design.

Through our workshops, we discovered key ideas that shaped the website. Words like unstoppable, energy, inspiration, and the interplay between past, present, and future emerged as the defining characteristics of Jasmina’s personality.

These insights directly influenced the design. The website became more than just a portfolio, it became a living narrative that brings her vision to life. A statue-like digital sculpture at the forefront of the homepage symbolizes Jasmina’s ability to bridge the wisdom of the past with the possibilities of the future. A continuous flowing line runs through the site, representing how she connects various ideas and disciplines. A pearl symbolizes wisdom and transformation, guiding users through her journey.

But storytelling isn’t just in the visuals — it’s in the experience itself. Smooth scrolling, interactive transitions, and fluid movements make the journey feel intuitive, allowing visitors to explore her story, making the experience both immersive and personal.

Learn more in our recent article.

2. Collaboration: Working as One Team

We always work as one team with our clients. As designers, our goal aligns with theirs—we want to launch a successful product. Our clients have deep insights about their business, and we help shape those insights into a compelling story.

3. Embracing Feedback

Many designers resist feedback, especially when it leads to changes. But let’s be honest, no client wants to make their website worse. Every change request has a reason behind it. The key is not just executing what the client asks but understanding why they’re asking for it. This brings us to the next point.

4. Asking “Why”

When we receive feedback, we don’t argue or execute it blindly. Instead, we dig deeper — asking why. A proposed change might not seem right at first, but the reasoning behind it often leads to a better solution and, ultimately, a better user experience.

5. No Surprises

Since we work as a team with our clients, regular check-ins are essential. After the discovery phase, the first thing we share is the information architecture and design direction (for example, a few blocks of the homepage). Once everyone is aligned on the direction, we continue development while keeping our clients in the loop. This transparency ensures productive discussions and avoids last-minute surprises.

A great example of teamwork was our collaboration with ai.io and Intel for an interactive experience at Amazon re:Invent. Our close partnership enabled us to create a highly engaging activation in a short timeframe.

We designed an AI-powered interactive booth where visitors could perform athletic drills that were analyzed in real time. This activation showcased the power of AI-driven feedback, enhancing user engagement while making it a great brand activation for ai.io’s technology.

Our teams worked closely from the initial concept to the launch, ensuring everything ran smoothly—even during the event itself. The success of this project led to its showcase at MWC Barcelona and later at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Learn more in our Case study.

Let’s explore more of our work where storytelling played a crucial role.

We would like to start with one of our favorite websites:

1. Microsite for Coinbase and the Golden State Warriors.

Another project where storytelling played a big role was our collaboration with Coinbase and the Golden State Warriors. With this project, we wanted to create a unique experience for basketball fans — a microsite that allowed them to mint exclusive NFTs during a live game.

The Golden State Warriors, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Bay Area’s iconic golden sunsets… We wanted to capture the “golden hour” aesthetic by experimenting with material rendering, HDRI lighting, and colors to create the perfect golden sunset.

To announce the experience, we designed a landing page that tied into the Golden State Warriors' legacy. To make it meaningful, we incorporated seven golden hoops hovering above the environment, symbolizing the seven championships won by the Warriors.

The microsite wasn’t just about NFTs; it was about making fans feel like they were part of the team. We focused on creating a mobile-first experience, making it easy for fans at the stadium to mint their unique collectible during the game. This experience was designed exclusively for Bay Area fans.

As a result, in just a few hours, this activation brought over 1,600 fans on-chain.

Learn more in our Case Study.

2. Noomo Labs - 3d immersive website which tells a story without words.

"We used to think that a story is something written, like in a book. But for websites and digital experiences, a story is what you see, feel, and interact with."

A great example is our Noomo Labs website. We didn’t rely on a lot of words to tell our story, but even without them, users who visit the site can clearly understand who we are, what we do, and what we specialize in — all through visuals, animations, and interactions. The experience itself tells the story, without the need for words.

The main feature on the website, the hero is a 3D jellyfish which users can customize and interact with. 

So, why a jellyfish? After a lot of experiments we landed on the idea because it represents constant movement and transformation, just like us. Its magical motion is unique. We wanted to make it memorable, wanted people to call it the Jellyfish website — and that’s exactly what’s happening.

But it wasn’t as easy as it seems. Along with the different technical challenges we had to overcome, like achieving the glass effect in a 3D web environment, we faced one more unexpected challenge. Our creative developer has a jellyfish phobia. So, you can imagine how “excited” he was when he found out we decided to move forward with a jellyfish concept.

But don’t worry — in the end, this jellyfish became the only one in the world that he actually likes!

This project was a lot of fun. It helped us better showcase who we are and what we can do. I’m very happy that so many people are having a lot of fun with it, too. On average, users spend two minutes on the site, just playing with the jellyfish.

Learn more in our recent article.

3. Noomo Beat - 3D website that allows to create personalized journey using AI.

The Noomo Beat website is a great example of how creating a storytelling website isn’t always a straightforward path. It involves a lot of experimentation, trying different options, testing ideas, and refining until we find what works best.

Our goal was to create a custom, personalized, and dynamic journey — making it the perfect opportunity to leverage AI.

However, we struggled to find the perfect “outcome” from this generation. We explored various ideas, from abstract visuals to characters, but nothing fit together seamlessly.

Then one day, we decided to experiment with the Wiggle Bones library, which helped us make a 3D cloth move along with the beat — and suddenly, everything started coming together, working in sync.

Noomo Beat enables users to generate custom music based on their preferences, selected via an intuitive quiz. Users choose their preferred genre, mood, tempo, theme, and even color, resulting in a unique musical experience that reflects their personality.

A core visual component of Noomo Beat is the collection of highly detailed 3D outfits that ‘dance’ to the rhythm of the music. Users can scroll to select different outfits, enhancing the personalization of their experience. We optimized these assets specifically for mobile devices, ensuring they load quickly and animate smoothly without compromising on quality or performance.

Users can customize the scene’s color palette and the album cover design, making each experience personal.

Learn more in our recent article.

"As you may see, the projects we are working on are very different from each other. They have different goals, different styles and different levels of complexity - but what unites them - is storytelling."

Lessons learned about storytelling.

Over the years, we’ve learned a few key lessons about storytelling:

1. Start with clarity. Know what you’re trying to say. Whether it’s launching a product or building emotional connections, the goal needs to be clear.
2. Let the story guide the design. Every animation, interaction, and visual should serve the narrative. If it doesn’t help to tell the story, it’s not needed.
3. Experiment and iterate. Some of our best ideas came from just trying things out and learning what worked.
4. Make it personal. The best stories connect emotionally. Whether it’s through AI personalization or custom design elements, find ways to make the experience unique for each user.
5. It's all about people. And don’t forget, stories are created by people, for people. When you're working on a project, it’s not just a collaboration between companies; it’s a collaboration between people from one company and people from another. At its core, it’s always about people working together.
   

Finding the focus.

We experienced the power of storytelling firsthand. During our rebrand and transformation, storytelling was the most important tool that helped us define who we are, clearly communicate it, attract the kind of clients we want to work with, and highlight our values, ultimately helping us stand out in the market.

For many people (ourselves included back then), focus can feel limiting. We tend to think that focusing on one thing means closing the door to new ideas or opportunities.

But in reality, focus isn’t about shutting things out. It’s about doing what you do best, what inspires you, and what you love. And when you do that, new opportunities often find you.

"The important thing about storytelling – you can’t tell a story without first defining what it’s about."

You can’t just throw in 20 heroes and a dozen different plots and expect it to make sense. A story needs clear goals and focus to be compelling.

In this difficult but fascinating journey, these two books can help you navigate this transformation.

The first was The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months, which introduces a system that replaces annual goal-setting with a 12-week cycle. Instead of thinking in terms of yearly goals we focused on 12-week "years" The most helpful takeaways for us were:

• Less is more – focus on priorities
  Instead of trying to do everything we started focusing on 1-3 key goals per 12-week period. 
• Time blocking
  We allocated specific time each week for strategic sessions blocking all distractions.
• Build a strong vision
  A clear personal and professional vision creates motivation and helps focus on things that matter the most

The second was Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, a guide to focusing on what truly matters and eliminating distractions. Instead of doing more, Essentialism teaches you to do less, but better.

To be successful at something, you need both passion and expertise. Finding our focus wasn’t just about choosing an industry trend, it was about aligning what excites us with what we excel at.

So, when choosing a focus, these two questions became our guiding principles:

1. What are we passionate about?
2. What are we really good at?

We hope you finish this article feeling inspired to tell your story – a story that connects, engages, and stays with people long after they’ve left the website.

Here you can find more about storytelling websites and interactive experiences:

• Golden State Warriors and Coinbase fun collectible. - An engaging 3D microsite that made the NFT minting process both intuitive and accessible for Golden State Warriors fans.
• Noomo ValenTime - an immersive storytelling about love.
• Noomo Beat - an immersive 3D AI audiovisual experience for brand activation. Read Case Study.
• Noomo Labs - a highly interactive 3D website with outstanding quality of 3d rendering and animations.
• Digital activation experience for Coinbase and LA Clippers - Bringing the energy of game night into fans’ hands.
• Jasmina Denner - a craft storytelling website that captures the essence of connectivity, linking past, present, and future. Learn more insights in the Case Study.
• The future of XR - an interactive and fun illustrated storytelling website. (You can find more information about this project in this article Behind the scenes of creating an engaging storytelling website.)
• Check out The best websites that use creative illustrations.
• Learn more about Increasing User Engagement with 3D, AR, and Immersive Web Experiences.
• Elevate marketing and sales by using immersive web experiences.
• How 3D configurators help brands increase engagement and improve user experience.
• Digital storytelling as the main way to tell your brand story.