2021 Digital Publication

Departures Magazine

Creative direction + User Experience + Editorial + Design Systems

A new era for a historical brand. American Express & Giant Spoon approached Kettle to help reimagine the new Departures.com experience into a premium digital publication.

Visit Departures.com

The Challenge

American Express and the Departures agency team tapped us to reinvent a decades-old legacy publication for the digital age. The mission? Modernize without alienating loyal readers, capture new audiences, ensure a scalable UX, and seamlessly integrate Giant Spoon's rebranding, all while making advertisements feel less intrusive and more a part of the reading journey.

As a hands-on Creative Director, I played a pivotal role in shaping design and experience solutions, collaborating closely with clients and partners, while leading a talented team in crafting the UX and UI.

User Experience Design

In collaboration with brand and content teams, we designed a future-ready UX for the new Departures.com. Through meticulous user research, we crafted wireframes tailored to diverse content types and storytelling, ensuring adaptability for emerging merchandising opportunities within the Departures ecosystem. Our approach balanced content scaling with user-centric design, using tools like Figma for iterative feedback and co-creation.

We designed the homepage to flex neatly around Departures' editorial schedule and created various sitemaps to accommodate 24 months of growth

Homepage

Article Page

Category Page

Art Direction

Leveraging Giant Spoon's stunning rebrand, I played a pivotal role in adapting it for digital. Collaborating closely with Giant Spoon and TBrand, we crafted a UI system that not only framed the content but also evoked an art gallery-inspired ambiance, ensuring the design remained faithful to its original inspiration while being scalable for diverse digital needs.