Storytelling Studio

The Storytelling Studio at Vox Media is a team of designers, journalists, and engineers who work on telling important stories in the best ways across different platforms. As the Design Director, I have worked as a designer on individual projects and have also managed the design work of others.

Vox: In search of Forrest Fenn’s treasure

Role: Design lead, User testing, visual design

Members of the Vox video and editorial teams traveled to Yellowstone National Park in search of a $2 million treasure. We collaborated deeply through the entire process, from storyboarding the narrative to publishing the story on several platforms. The final products were a text-based narrative with video integration and a 24-minute YouTube documentary.

Read about how we storyboarded this story
Read about how we built custom poem annotations
Visit the live story

Vox: Why Obamacare enrollees are getting ready for repeal

Role: Design lead, visual design, apple news producer

Sarah Kliff, Vox’s Senior Policy Correspondent, interviewed people who were able to pursue nontraditional careers because of the Affordable Care Act. During her time reporting on health policy for Vox, Sarah Kliff has started a Facebook group for Obamacare enrollees, invited enrollees to her interview with President Obama, and started a newsletter to explain the most important health care news. This story was a chance for us to take the reporting she was already doing and present it in a visual way. We designed and published this story on our platform, on Google AMP, and on Apple News.

Visit the live story

Vox: President Trump’s inauguration address, annotated

Role: Design lead, visual design

Inspired by NPR’s live annotation of President Trump’s press conference, we set out to build a mechanism for Vox reporters to annotate a live transcript of an event. After the inauguration, we built a tool that would allow Vox reporters and editors to transcribe any event or document — live or not.

Curbed: 10 streets that define America

Role: Design lead, user testing, interaction design, visual design

Curbed went to 10 cities and reported from one street in each. Over the course of several months, photographers, videographers, editors, and engagement editors collaborated with the Storytelling Studio to produce this exhaustive look at the forces shaping our cities today.

Read about how we user tested the story
Read about scaling the design system across multiple platforms
Visit the live story

Story Credits

Screenshot of the final design, illustrations by Javier Zarracina

Vox: Trump Tax

Role: Design lead, visual design

Vox’s team originally set out to build a typical election forecast. However, once they examined the data from their model, they found a different story. They discovered the Trump Tax: the gap between where Donald Trump should be according to an estimate from the fundamentals model and where he actually is according to a polls-based model. You can read more about the evolution of the story on Vox.