Vogue.com.au
Redesign for News Life Media • working at Lowe Profero • 2013
NewsLifeMedia had decided to transform from a print-first business into a publisher with digital as it’s core. Which is a very easy thing to say and a very hard thing to do. Their first order of business was to look at their two most popular brands, Vogue and Taste (read more about that project here).
They had excellent editorial and technological talent to make this happen, and they had recently completed a year long project to establish a “One Vogue” strategy. What they didn’t have was design leadership or a commercial model to support redeveloping the site.
NewsLifeMedia succonded myself and my UX partner Justin Tauber to lead the vision and the team to create a vogue.com.au that could live proudly next to its sister magazine.
Industry first use of Responsive design for immersive gallery experiences
Architecturally, this meant integrating what had almost become two separate parts of the site - the news functions and the forums. We did this by integrating the comment system on every article with the forums themselves, which has dramatically increased cross over between the two sides of the site, massively increasing page views and therefore revenue. We also developed a new structure that had both Audience and Advertisers in mind, which grouped content into perennial themes, such as wedding attire or beach fashion. This gave users much more to explore, and advertisers an entire section of the site to sponsor, instead of a few banners here and there.
The visual style of Vogue is extremely hard to lock down into the kind of system that’s required for a website. During discovery, when asking about brand guidelines we were told that “you either get Vogue or you don’t”. So very Vogue. We designed a system that bridged Vogue’s decades-old authority with their forward-looking nature, making sure that the content was the hero.
The redesign has been a huge business success, winning Magazine Website of the Year at the Australian Magazine Awards, and returning to its rightful position as Australia’s #1 fashion site.