SportsJOE Editorial
An important part of working as a designer in a media company is making sure content can go out fast when news breaks — without the social or editorial teams needing a designer on standby.
The way we dealt this was by building a library of reusable templates. These let the designers lock in the important brand elements — like type, colour, layout, and hierarchy — so everything stayed visually consistent. At the same time, the templates were flexible enough that non-designers could quickly update them to suit whatever story they were working on. These needed to be structured enough to protect the brand, but open enough to keep up with the pace of live content.
At SportsJOE, this was especially useful for live sports coverage. I created templated graphics for rugby, GAA, and soccer score updates, as well as league tables, top scorer charts, and team lineups. This meant the team could post match updates in real time while still keeping a strong, consistent visual style across the board.
The result was faster publishing, more consistent output, and a much stronger overall presence on social feeds.
But while consistency builds recognition, some stories need to stand out. For bigger editorial features and high-priority pieces, I designed custom graphics to give them more visual impact. These were made to be more social feed scroll-stopping, and also impactful on the website as article images, to signal that a story was something special.
Together, the template system and custom visuals created a design approach that could handle both speed and impact — reliable for day-to-day coverage, but flexible enough to elevate the stories that really mattered.
