PFF is known mostly by hardcore NFL fans, fantasy fanatics, statisticians, and sports media outlets, to provide the most in-depth, accurate and thought-provoking information on professional football player performance available online. But facing a breakout year and assured spikes in traffic based off of mentions on Sunday night football, they needed to quickly redesign their platform to be able to handle the traffic as well as make their site ready for prime time.
We pitched and won the PFF work in May 2015. I was creative lead on the pitch and was fortunate enough to continue on the business after the win. We were immediately faced with an aggressive timeline of only 60 days to redesign and programed their platform from the ground up. In addition we guided them through redefining their subscription model in order to shift the focus to a broader consumer base with a focus on fantasy.
PFF generates a large amount of rich content on a daily basis, so we needed a design that was flexible enough to account for a variety of content from text and imagery to video or data focused.
We knew that over half of the traffic to the site was through mobile and predicted that was only going to increase, we needed to make sure our template was responsive to all screen sizes, especially smaller ones.
We had a legacy logo to work with but no brand guidelines, especially as it pertained to the new look of the site. So we created a style guide to define these standards and give their editorial team guard rails for maintaining the integrity of the site. We also worked with them on creating an identifiable tone of voice and a unique POV that is unique to their industry.