Context
PhotoVogue is an international photography platform and community that showcases the work of emerging and underrepresented artists, while connecting them to other photographers, artists and creatives within the Condé Nast network.
Vogue editorial staff curate work and artists featured on the platform in addition to hosting open global calls for work and educational initiatives.
Photovogue began as a bespoke project from Vogue Italy in 2011, encompassing an online platform as well as a physical event, the annual PhotoVogue festival, curated by Vogue Italy and held in Milan, Italy.
Challenge
This project involved a complete redesign of PhotoVogue.it for integration into the global Vogue.com website. The team needed to establish a new governence model compatible with the Vogue international's website. This meant a complete redesign of Photovogue.com, while maintaining the original essence of the Italian based platform.
Our team was tasked with scaling a country-specific project to global scale while preserving its core mission and values. This involved a 0-1 approach as the brand's global product used an entirely different publishing platform and back-end system than the Italy-based product.
Research
Home Page Redesign
Photo Grid Gallery
Challenge: Showcase photographers' work and credentials without overwhelming users or creating performance issues with large portfolios (some users had 500+ images).
Solution: How to use existing templates for the editorial platform to create a photo grid to display contributing designers’ photos. Each photo needed to include key specific information, and we were limited to a few options for text formatting and text entry fields.
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Design
Photographer Highlight
How to Highlight Photographers within Editorial Categories, while prioritizing legibility and minimalist design.
Search Filters
Allow the ability to search for photos and photographers in a simple and intuitive manner within the constraints of a system not designed to do so.
This initiative brought together distributed product design, engineering, and editorial teams across Italy, the U.S., the U.K., and India to align creative vision, technical architecture, and operational workflows under a shared product strategy.
We were faced with:
- Designing and shipping an entirely new design system within a completely new architectural framework and many constraints (frontend, CMS, and backend systems)
- Maintaining product-market fit while ensuring a seamless transition from the regional product to the product on a global scale
- Preserving the artist community identity and curatorial integrity that earned the original platform success
- Navigating complex stakeholder alignment across 4 international teams with competing priorities
- Balancing business objectives (global expansion, operational efficiency) with mission-critical values (diversity, inclusion, creator empowerment)
Final Outcome
This project reimagined PhotoVogue as a global creative platform by translating a locally curated editorial model into a scalable product system used across 28+ markets.
System-level impact:
- Design system components were integrated into the principal international vogue library
- Editorial workflow patterns became a template for other curatorial products in the Photovogue portfolio
Team & organizational:
- This project established a model example for national and international collaboration amongst Condé Nast product teams
- The new documentation and component library reduced onboarding time for new designers by 3 wee
