Hinge
Role: Art direction, strategy, and asset design
Team: Branding/Marketing
Overview
At Hinge I worked on a variety of high-converting projects – creating cohesive, robust sub-brands that echoed the principles of Hinge’s style guide. I also audited our existing systems and content, oversaw and signed off on visual assets from partners, developed an evergreen hiring test for illustration freelancers, art directed illustration and photography, built out our photo library, and worked extensively with our social team – leading to several Webby Awards.
I branded Hinge’s successful Ghost Stories podcast – creating a clickable modular identity based directly on best conversion practices for podcast covers.
The key art is a pun, bridging the gap between spooky stories and the concept of ‘ghosting’ in dating.
The podcast did extremely well in the love and dating charts, rising to number 3 in relationships, within the US – with highly positive app store reviews and press coverage. It reached number 1 in several countries outside the US, significantly expanding our international PR. During the month Ghost Stories was published, the Hinge app received the greatest number of international conversions it had ever had, up to that point in time – as well as the largest number of overall downloads in the company's history, to that date, among LGBTQ users.
Illustration Art Direction & Onboarding System
One of the nicest parts of my job was working with talented illustrators on commissioned assignments. Our illustration style guide was complex and in order to both assess alignment for hiring, as well as get an illustrator up to speed during the hiring process – so once contracted they could hit the ground running – I developed an illustration onboarding assignment that taught and tested at the same time. Due to the fact that illustrators were working within the Hinge style guide before they were contracted for a formal assignment, it was important to me to cover bases for both the company and the applicants regarding ethics and legality. I worked closely with our legal team to develop a nuanced assignment contract, and to ensure applicants were paid for their test time. The system consistently delivered an excellent art direction/contractor relationship from the get-go, efficiency, and beautiful final work.
The following illustrations were created by Aster Hung.
Test result of front-view woman next to lamp by illustrator Aster Hung
Hingie Horoscopes Social Series
I branded our cheeky social series of rude horoscopes. This work was created before instagram allowed certain types of motion files in stories. And so I came up with a stop-motion UX concept, where a user would flick through each of the 12 instagram story slides posted at the same time, and in doing so, move a gold highlight square around the horoscope wheel like a physical flipbook.
Art Direction from a Hinge merch shoot for The Hingie Store
Social Flotsam & Jetsam
