DIGITAL PROJECTS
Milwaukee Magazine - Email design - when less is more
Milwaukee Magazine wanted to redesign the newsletters to improve the whole experience. The old newsletters were a hot mess of article links and display ads that was an attempt to make it look like a landing page for a website, but ended up making it confusing to the reader which lead to decreasing open and click-through rates. The ads also cannibalized the sponsored content that has a much higher ROI. I simplified the template design considerably, ditched the display ads completely, and made the focus on one main story with four secondary stories. It wasn't easy getting the sales team to get on-board with removing the ads, but after our open- and click-through rates shot up to 40% and 17% respectively, they immediately embraced the new design.
CHICAGO READER - People Issue micro site - for a better experience
The People Issue is an annual project that highlights around 20 individuals from Chicago who are typically not in the media spotlight but do amazing work. It's always a challenge to display 20 stories with equal weight so in 2013 we started developing micro sites in order to better serve that purpose. 2013 was a bit overly complicated (parallax scrolling was all the new rage) but we achieved the original creative direction. In subsequent years we slowly paired back the design in order to let the content—the stories, photography, and videos—shine through. In 2015 we achieved an elegant solution and in 2016 we simply added to the 2015 build in order to leverage the content from previous years.
Original sketch for the 2013 site.
CHICAGO READER - Web site design
The Chicago Reader wanted to redesign its website for a new and improved experience for its audience. The goal was a simplified design and intuitive navigation built around the two biggest categories of content: “stuff to read” and “stuff to do.” We also paired down advertisements to increase their value in an attempt to wrestle money away from residual advertisements.
CHICAGO READER - MObile app design
The Reader developed a mobile app called "Reader 5" in 2015 order to leverage and promote the depth of our listings. The idea was to offer five things to do a day across a diverse range of categories, searchable in a list, by location, or by time. The app was never completed due to financial constraints.
