Pressly (2012-2014)
See you later, aggregator
Role: Senior Product Designer
Key Challenges: To provide brands with a more immersive and engaging experiences through touch screen interfaces for their audience. To help boost subscription and marketing opportunities with their products. To support Pressly’s partners with a modular, scalable, and dynamic content management system for the product.
What I did: I owned all creative direction, brand design tools, CMS, and user experience design for the Pressly startup and it’s digital product.
Pressly was a B2B product that helped brands put their content on the web and digital devices in the most interactive and delightful way possible at the time. Pressly offered a subscription model and we collaborated with our subscribers to help build their digital identities and experiences using the platform.
Our goal was to provide the most innovative and delightful product experience possible for any brand that we collaborated with. We achieved this consistently and often during Pressly’s run.
I was responsible for all product branding, identity, and owned all of the CMS and system design that was leveraged by our team and clients to run the platform.
We designed the Pressly app before I knew what a content aggregator was. It’s also the first time that I really learned how to use grids to my advantage in design. This toolset would later become essential in my role at Business Insider.
One of our top clients was The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest news publication. We leveraged the Pressly platform to create a unique tool to help bring their product into the digital space like their users had never seen before. We also worked with Wired, GQ, The Economist, Accenture, Rogers, Scotiabank, and The Grid.
Though very successful at the time, as many start-ups, we were early to market, but just not fast enough. The Flipboards of the world caught up and Pressly eventually disappeared.