The Toronto Star
I joined the Toronto Star as Art Director, Digital at a pivotal moment in its history, as one of Canada’s largest newsrooms was rebuilding itself for a digital-first future. At the centre of that shift was Toronto Star Touch, a new daily tablet edition that surpassed 200,000 downloads within its first five months and was recognized by Apple as one of the best apps of 2015.
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Working across a team of 20+ designers, I helped establish the visual standards and working practices for this new editorial environment, setting creative direction while remaining deeply hands-on in the work. Star Touch quickly developed an engaged audience, averaging more than 45,000 weekday sessions and 50,000 on weekends during its early months.
Day to day, I art-directed and designed lead stories, breaking news, major investigations and ambitious multimedia features, collaborating with editors, reporters, photographers, illustrators, developers and video teams. The work required translating the craft and judgment of editorial design into a new medium—finding ways to use typography, photography, illustration, motion and interaction to give each story its own character while maintaining a coherent experience across the publication.
It was a formative period in how I think about creative direction: establishing a strong system and point of view, then using it as a foundation for distinctive individual work at speed.
