Project URL: http://honestreporting.com/
Completed: August, 2014
HonestReporting is a non-profit media monitor with offices in Jerusalem and the United States. The organization educates the public and empowers the grassroots to defend Israel against media bias.
As Lead Designer for five years, I worked with various small teams to elevate branding, produce materials, improve workflow, evaluate technology, and re-design every aspect of audience interaction and internal/external communications. My work touched almost everything there, every day.
Managing People and Projects
Collaboration was key to our relatively small editorial team at HR. My role had me interact with various ad hoc personnel to complete thousands of projects. I trained three graphic designers to work under my direction – and to carry on when I was out.
Responsive Website Design
I was integral to the revamping of HonestReporting’s website. The webmaster and I chose a magazine-style theme on the WordPress platform, making it easy for editors to update daily. I was one of the first people in Israel to realize the importance of responsive design (way back in 2011), and dove deep into research before presenting and implementing my recommendations – side-stepping the “separate mobile site/app” debate, among other benefits. We rolled out my improvements into fresh responsive email designs as well, and added many customizations.
Social Media
HonestReporting posts daily on Facebook and Twitter, and promotes articles and blog posts on various media outlets. I implemented and maintained a Flickr feed of shareable graphics. The team produced educational materials for their own website and for SlideShare, and we analyzed statistics for improvement. Everything gets a boost from social media; as the CEO once said, “If no one knows about it, then it’s as if it didn’t happen.”
Snapshot of the first seven months of 2015: HonestReporting’s Facebook page reached 11.1 million users, with almost 40,000 followers. The most viewed post reached 782,000 users. Growth was exponential during my time as Lead Designer, reaching up to 250,000 Facebook users per week. I designed this memo to stakeholders that highlights HR’s Facebook success (end of 2014) with visuals and statistics.
Landing Pages and Sub-Sites
- An overview “New Here?” page that includes my custom code to display videos in a responsive format (side-by-side horizontal video viewers on a desktop browser scale down to a vertical stack on mobile devices, maintaining aspect ratios)
- HonestReporting’s Mission to Israel is a sub-site I designed and developed with HTML and CSS best practices; it integrates content from HR’s WordPress site and includes responsive forms.
- Email signup page
- Donation page on Mophilanthropy platform
- Safe sender email instructions: how to add an address to your address book
- I did the writing on the Careers page
