Hello! I’m Sean. I’m a brand and editorial designer with some front-end development skills.
I’m currently at The New York Times working on digital editorial design. I also lead creative direction for Chinatown Basketball Club (CBC), a local arts and sports community.
You can find my writing on Algorithmic Botany at Are.na and my writing on identity and aesthetics within basketball in CBC’s forthcoming book, FLOATER: Blurring Basketball Lines.
I have also taught at the Parsons School of Design and the School for Poetic Computation.
Below is a highlight reel of my design work at the NYT. See nytimes.com/by/sean-catangui for a more comprehensive list, and please reach out for full case studies and/or gift links to view the articles without a subscription.
A gamified article to help tell the rich visual history and design philosophy of The Legend of Zelda franchise.
Designed and coded with Rumsey Taylor and Tala Safie.
<aside> 🏆 Award of Excellence, Society for News Design, 2023
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I built an interactive introduction that conveys the scale and emotional weight of an investigation in Afghanistan. I used WebGL to efficiently render the large number of images from the investigation’s database in a scroll-based animation.
Designed alongside Rumsey Taylor and Leo Dominguez.
<aside> 🏆 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, 2024
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Screen Recording 2025-09-29 at 10.52.31 PM.mov
I researched, designed, and developed this story about the linguistic impacts of hip-hop for the New York Times Magazine. The design was process was one of ruthless simplification until we arrived at this “totem pole” layout.
Designed art directed in collaboration with Kate LaRue, Jacky Myint, and Antonio De Luca.
<aside> 🏆 Gold Cube, Art Director’s Club, 2023
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