PROBLEM
Redesigning a editorial for 3M monthly readers
TribLIVE is a local digital newspaper in Western Pennsylvania. Around 3 million people read it every month. The site was running on a design that hadn't kept up, and Woods Creative was brought in to redesign it end to end after the rebrand.
The brief: make it easier for readers to find what they need, lift engagement, and give them a reason to dig into more of what TribLIVE covers. Underneath all of that, build a design system the team can actually maintain.
How might we restructure TribLIVE so readers find what they need quickly, and give the team design foundations to keep it that way?
CONSTRAINTS
A partner agency setup, sitting on a legacy codebase
TribLive hired Woods Creative to specialize in the redesign and consolidation after their rebranding. As a designer on the team, senior-level development and design decisions were passed to me from client conversations.
A legacy tech stack meant the Dev team built each page from scratch, with no components or shared variables, which slowed everyone down. I ran a session with them on how a component-based system would save time, then set up the Figma file so they could adopt it when ready.
The rest of the job was keeping the focus on readers: their needs, their habits, and the moments that would bring them back.
APPROACH
Competitive analysis and parallel system-building
With no resources for user research, I relied on competitive analysis, design heuristics, and user's feedback the newsroom had gathered through email and surveys. I explored layout directions in Figma while building the design system in parallel, so the experience and the foundation came together.
IMPACT
30+ pages, one system, rolling out in phases
The redesign is shipping in phases. I designed 30+ pages with hundreds of variations across desktop, tablet, and mobile, all built on a Figma design system (variables, styles, components) that the dev team can pull from directly.
Metrics are still coming in. For now, the impact is in how the site presents itself: clearer, more current, and more trustworthy at a time when that matters for local news.
DESIGN
Glimpse of delivered designs
RETROSPECTIVE
What carried forward
Foundations are worth building even when no one is ready for them. A component library that doesn't get used immediately is not a wasted library. It's a bet on the next iteration of the team.
Advocacy is part of the design job. Half of what I contributed wasn't pixels. It was conversations with engineering, with our partner agency, with stakeholders, about why what we proposed was worth doing.
Working through a partner agency teaches you to be specific. When your work passes through other people before it reaches the client, anything vague gets lost on the way. Every recommendation had to be clear and self-contained, so it still made sense by the time someone else was presenting it.
Team
Woods Creative
Amy Parker, Executive Design Director
Chris Bransfield, Executive Experience Director
Ella Irving, Designer, Brand
Harsha Gowda, Product Designer
Zozimus
Jake Garber, SVP Strategy and Account
Jenna Dimond, Account Director
Jessica Jones, Director, Research & Analytics
Mark McConnell, Director of Development
Shawn Yauger, Development Manager
Robert Egnacheski, Front End Developer
Eric Lilja, Front End Developer
Cullen McGlynn, Product Designer
Matthew Bogard, Senior Art Director, Brand