Dark28 — Case Study

• Next.js
• TypeScript
• React
• Tailwind CSS

The question

Lisbon's Tram 28 passes through layers of history that most tourist guides ignore. I kept finding apps that told the same polished story and skipped the uncomfortable parts — the dictatorship, the colonial memory, the religious weight embedded in the architecture. What if a route helped you understand a city instead of just photograph it?

What I built

An editorial web app that transforms the Tram 28 into a self-guided dark tourism experience. Users discover landmarks filtered by historical theme, read narrative context for each stop, and build a personal plan of places to visit and track.

• Editorial homepage with thematic framing
• Landmark discovery by theme (dictatorship, colonialism, religion, death)
• Detail pages with narrative context per stop
• Save landmarks and track visited places
• Route direction toggle and dark/light theme
• Fully responsive, mobile-first

Technical decisions

Next.js (App Router) — editorial content needs good SEO and fast initial load. Server components simplified data fetching and nested layouts.

TypeScript throughout — enforced clear data contracts between components and caught two broken data shapes before they hit the UI.

Tailwind CSS — rapid iteration on a content-heavy interface without fighting specificity. Consistent spacing without thinking about it.

localStorage + custom hooks — one useLocalStorage hook persisted all user state across four features with no backend required.

What I learned

Designing content-first changes the UI. The narrative weight of each stop shaped the information hierarchy — generic card components didn't work because the content resisted being genericised. TypeScript caught real bugs, not theoretical ones. App Router's server/client boundary required rethinking where state lives.