First, a bit of background. Nike has always been a leader in the social change space; Nike employees are some of the most philanthropic and generous people that anyone is likely to meet. But even for them, finding those opportunities to give back to one’s community has always proved to be a bit of a challenge. Nike works with dozens of organizations that provide opportunities to volunteer or donate, but visiting all of their separate websites and using all of their individual search methods just to find some way to volunteer tends to be quite a chore.

The WE Portal breaks down that barrier to entry by presenting giving opportunities from multiple sources in one easily searched and sorted place. Thanks to the WE Portal, Nike employees are now able to find opportunities to volunteer, to make matched donations, and to find advocacy around the topics that they are most passionate about, regardless of the source of that opportunity – even other Nike employees can submit them.

In launching the WE Portal we successfully executed a project that involved every bit of our skillsets – from initial concept to interface design to development to branding to print materials. The WE Portal is currently Nike’s primary internal platform for encouraging employees to get involved with their communities—a platform which we continue to work on and improve daily—and the employees who use it to make the world a better place remain a constant source of inspiration.

By the way, I would be remiss if i didn’t mention how much of the design work on this project was also done by my friend and WTM colleague Todd Quackenbush. He was instrumental especially in the early stages of visual design and the WE Portal wouldn’t look nearly as good as it does now without his involvement.

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After sitting down and tossing out some ideas, we arrived at a pretty radical (but undeniably fun) idea – create an entire Nike-branded twitter platform, with loads of custom functionality for sneaker shops.

That platform eventually became The Hookup, A fully-featured Twitter client that is not only branded to feel premium and polished in the Nike tradition, but also contains a ton of additional functionality aimed at building relationships between sneakerheads and their local sneaker shops.

Once a user is verified as a retailer, they’re given access to a bevy of tools designed to make it easy and fun to create twitter-based missions. In essense, missions are simple mini-contests with rewards. Retailers can easily create their own, or they can choose from a few premade default missions. They can vary in complexity from “first person in the door today gets a t-shirt!” to more complex, labyrinthine objectives.

In addition to creating missions, retailers are given special status on the site so that users are the first to know if their favorite local shop tweets about a new shipment of quickstrike or one-time-only kicks. The Hookup even allows for finding shops near you, so if you don’t have much sneaker game yet, it can help you get there.

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While it follows the general idea of the DDR brand, the community site is not based on any one product; the look was achieved using box art from across all the games and with input from Konami, and a fresh new coat of paint that references a sort of futuristic user interface. This allows the site to feel related to every part of the DDR Universe, but still maintain a separate identity of its own.

The design actually went through a bunch of revisions and a complete team change on the client’s side before settling on this final product. It’s surprisingly difficult to balance all the visual interest that’s expected with a video game franchise with all the flexibility and room that’s needed for a social network’s wealth of content; I think the final product achieves that balance well, feeling very much like a DDR product but also feeling open and clean enough to fit various types of content.

I delivered: Photoshop PSDs

TIAS was a challenge because it needed to feel like more than a simple sports blog. It needed to reflect not only soccer but also the culture around the sport, as well the author himself (it could be argued that TIAS is equally a study of all three). After missing the mark a few times, we landed on a look that straddled the line between beautiful and chaotic, while remaining very readable and engaging. Reclaimed wood (which Adam had a particular affinity for), large photo space, sleek elements mixed with light weathering effects. The overall effect is one of an extremely well-crafted piece of equipment that has seen years of use, but is only better for it.

In addition to the blog’s design, we worked out a neat little logo mark that plays on the American soccer idea; A star constructed from five pentagons that evoke a soccer ball. Fun right?

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Gleukos’ brand is active and energetic, but also refined, elite and uncompromising. For their site I tried to show both sides; colorful and full of motion, but also sleek and intelligent.

The silver curves mirror the product packaging, and the halftone pattern found throughout their marketing materials is referenced in the yellow header area. The large amounts of whitespace, however, and the otherwise subtle color palette, convey a smarter, more mature product – less manic or severe, more intelligent, determined and enthusiastic.

Given that, at the time, Gleukos had no means of selling product through the website, the question of primary messaging was fairly simple; Explain what Gleukos is and why it’s different. Secondary objectives included allowing users to find places near them that carried Gleukos, and showcasing the small but growing community they’d spent so much time building.

Users can then click into a course to view a description, scorecards, events, etc.

I delivered: Photoshop PSDs

I delivered: Photoshop PSDs

The site was designed to emphasize Ebbets’ heritage, and to create an engaging story around the products and the company itself. Baseball themed elements and period details are offset by weathering and more modern type choices, all finished off with an actual scan of the tag placed in every Ebbets Field garment.