500px
When I started at 500px, a fantastic design system had already been established. The challenge, though, was it lacked personality. Helvetica as the typeface, Facebook blue as their primary colour - and the website had little to no consistency. My goal was to bring some life and energy into this 10-year-old photo-sharing startup.
Sign Me Up
My first step to creating a more exciting brand was the signup page for 500px.com. What sets the company apart is the incredible imagery that you cannot find on other similar websites. However, the previous landing page used generic imagery that can be found on most other photo sharing platforms.
Right away I began using the wealth of gorgeous, colourful, high-quality imagery throughout the site that wasn’t being utilized. So I started incorporating this type of content into designs to visually show what sets 500px apart from other photography platforms.
Icon make it right
There was a lack of consistency throughout the site and app. Elements from one page to another were totally different. Some buttons were rectangular, others round, the navigation and the way images were displayed changed, and so on.
I decided that an easy way to help unify the app and web experience was to create a consistent, custom icon set. I redesigned and created over 100 new icons – including some challenging ones like Quests (500px’s contest platform), for which I used a rocketship – to help bring harmony to the platform.
Collective Arts
For this global campaign, 500px partnered with Collective Arts to provide the community with a unique opportunity to showcase their photography on a beer can.
Working with the marketing teams at both 500px and Collective Arts, I owned the creative direction for this campaign. This consisted of helping to determine an overall theme for the ‘call for submissions’, designing all promotional material including; landing page, social promotion, newsletter and blog assets as well as selecting the four winners of the campaign.
For the launch event with Collective Arts, we hosted a gallery of the winners, along with their cans. I conceived of an activation event for the launch in which we set up a photo back drop, and collection of props based on the theme of the contest. Guests were encouraged to take photos with their cameras or phones using the photo set, and submit the photos to win prizes at the end of the event.
These beer cans can now be found (with the 500px logo) in beer stores, liquor stores, and grocery stores all over the world, and will become an annual collaboration with Collective Arts.
CONTACT Photography Festival 2019
Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival is the largest annual photography festival globally. For this project, I had the opportunity to drive the creative direction while working closely with the PR and Marketing team to execute 500px’s first-ever public photo exhibition.
We started by finding Alison Morris, a talented local artist to be our main exhibitor. From there we launched a ‘call for submissions’ where we asked the global 500px community to submit work to be featured in a complimentary gallery. Our contest, referred to as ‘Quests’ at 500px, received over 20,000 photo submissions. Our small, but dedicated team curated and selected 107 images to be included in this two-part exhibition.
To promote the photo Quest and month-long exhibit, I created a dedicated responsive landing page, social and promotional assets, a show guide, as well as traditional print signage.
Got Swag-ger
When tasked with updating the company swag, I looked to popular street fashion brands for inspiration. We wanted items that people would want to wear, and want to take home…it worked!
We now have people come up to us at events and ask if they could purchase a tee or hat, and have been told that our postcards make great fridge art.
