A note from Brenton Laverty, lead designer for Polygon:
In the days leading up to my transition to Vox Media from life at a digital agency, I hadn't a clue what I'd be working on. I assumed I'd be helping out with visual odds-and-ends on SB Nation or The Verge, and that Polygon's design and development was already in full-swing production with Vox once again collaborating with a famous NYC agency. That wasn't the case. Vox would be creating Polygon completely in-house, leveraging the incredible progress on the upcoming SB Nation relaunch as a guide to designing a fully-responsive, device-agnostic news outlet at massive scale.
Finding out that I'd be working on Polygon filled me with excitement and a little bit of terror: these are gamers we're going to be creating a home for after all. A very opinionated bunch. Video games, like websites, are a culmination of design and user experience. As gamers, we're all hyper-sensitive to visuals, controls, interfaces and tones and we'll judge any given game harshly when things don't work. So, how do you create a digital home which celebrates this medium we're all so passionate about without it being divisive itself?
With visual design wrapping up, I look back and I'm really proud of what we've accomplished in four months. Coming from an agency background, in-house designers and developers never get a fair shake. I came into this tainted with some of the same unfair sentiments, but I can honestly say that I've never worked with a group of more talented and thoughtful people. Everyone at Vox has blown me away.
I hope you enjoy this brief glimpse into our process.
Brenton Laverty, designer
@brentlaverty
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