While contracted at B-Reel, I worked with Creative Director Irena Milev to design a custom micro-site experience called Pinterest Academy, an e-learning platform for marketers and creators.
As a small team we crafted a comprehensive suite comprised of seven courses for the platform. As senior designer, I was responsible for developing the design direction, refining the UX, presenting the work, creating animated prototypes, and working with developers on implementation and QA.
The project went through a number of revisions due to usual technical and budgetary constraints. The final direction was ultimately trimmed down to a focused, functional, and more quiet voice with subtle animations and minimal interactions.
Pinterest Academy™
Micro-Site
Pinterest itself was going through a bit of an identity crisis at the time internally as the company was undergoing a reorganization with new leadership. Both brand and marketing teams clashed on the visual language and voice of the ‘new’ Pinterest. We navigated this by guiding the client towards a stream-lined brand-agnostic solution that could work from both a design perspective and user-first perspective for many years, despite any high-level changes to the brand look/feel that might take place given the strategical changes internally.
The core elements of color, typography, and the iconic Pinterest pin corner radius were timeless and so we sought to retain these brand pillars while creating a thoughtful environment for learning that didn't feel like a typical YouTube tutorial but rather a pleasant reading experience and bite-sized educational course that was focused and to the point.
The tone/voice work behind Pinterest Academy initially took a few more ‘playful’ turns with animated backgrounds, dynamic scroll-based color shifting, more interactive moments in-between lessons, and gifs thrown into the mix. The tone was found a bit too whimsical for business and marketing strategy end-users. If the product had been open to the public some ‘fun’ would have certainly been welcomed.
