Ray Glier - brand, site development

Ray Glier, a sports journalist with contributions to national publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, USA TODAY, The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe, Atlanta-Journal Constitution, and Ozy Magazine, among others, asked me to design a website and blog with a distinctive new brand to showcase his sports and feature writing. He’s co-authored five books, including "4th and Goal Every Day" (2017) and "How the SEC Became Goliath" (2012). I created his brand and the site, which also featured his long writing career in a portfolio of clips. Additionally, I photographed Ray in various settings for use as bio pictures. The project's goal was to attract more digital freelance writing opportunities for Ray, and it was successful.

Website design and development

Ray's website is no longer live due to his personal reasons. A screenshot of the home page is above. I have compiled images of my working notes and composites, which were approved by him for the pages before they went live. I thoroughly enjoyed following Ray's blog posts, which he frequently updated on schedule. The posts garnered great engagement, with Ray delving into sports stories with his usual flair. Click on the button below for the PDF showing the site design.

Site pages and structure

Brand Identity

The creative direction for Ray's new brand focused on clean minimalism to showcase his content. The palette consisted of black and white with a strong red accent. Photos were used in the blog and social media, and line image illustrations of faces served as secondary graphics to warm the palette and draw focus to the reader-centric message. The typography was sans-serif, clean, modern, with a modest use of an American Typewriter font for a visual accent, providing a touchstone to his writing and a feeling of connectivity for the reader.

Photography

Here are the original images I shot of Ray in color. I converted them to B&W to maintain visual continuity with the brand elements.

Mood board

Here is the original mood board I used when planning Ray's brand design. It gave us a lot to discuss and refine before finalizing his project.

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