Airbnb Newsroom

The Background

Ready State agency was tasked with creating a press site for Airbnb to coincide with the company's annual public conference, Airbnb Open 2016. The website was designed to house media assets and provide quick reference to facts about the company for press. I created various concepts and high-fidelity wireframes for the client's feedback, and successfully delivered a press site that met the client's needs and launched in time for Airbnb Open LA 2016, with the flexibility to receive future updates.

The Creative Direction

The website was designed to reflect the brand identity and style of Airbnb, with a clean and modern look and feel, and a focus on user-friendliness to feel as inviting as having a guest stay at their home. Additionally, the site design was optimized for mobile devices, so that users can access the site from anywhere.

Timeline

4 weeks

Role

Visual Designer

Skills

UX Design,
Visual Design

Client

Original Concepts

Working closely with the media team at Airbnb, I started by creating a few initial concepts of what the site could be, with consideration to the time constraints we were up against. Together, we focused on what aspects would benefit Airbnb to launch this at the same time as their Open LA conference and get more media assets available to journalists covering the event.

Home page

With our chosen design in mind I created fully functional designs that welcomed new users and gave access to new information at their desk as well as at their fingertips on the go.

Article entries

When users visit the News page they would be able to browse articles that mattered most to them. Ensuring that the articles could be read in the most digestible form meant creating a family of type styles that supported the content that would live here. I carefully referenced numerous examples of content and found the most consistent patterns to implement, creating a comfortable reading experience no matter the length or depth.

About us

Beyond getting news out, we also wanted readers who might be unfamiliar with everyone involved at Airbnb to learn more about the teams who make the company special. I created an About Us page that outlined the leadership team and described the story of Airbnb from it’s roots to the globally-known brand that it hand become.

Personal biographies

From the About Us page the user could learn more direct information related to each team member. This helped to tell a more detailed story of Airbnb’s journey as each member of leadership has dedicated their time and experience in largely different ways.

Media Assets

One of the most important opportunities we saw in creating this Newsroom site was giving journalists the ability to gather relevant assets to accompany the words on their pages. I designed a page that could house images, videos, and documents that have all been approved by the media team at Airbnb to go out to the world.

Fast Facts

Working with journalists, I learned that having a place to quickly fact check their information when writing a piece on a company greatly benefits the journalists and company alike, in terms of accuracy. No company wants to be misunderstood. I designed a Fast Facts page as a reference point to help journalists.

Search articles

While the site was still in it’s infancy we planned for a time in the future where the amount of articles and information on the site could become overwhelming for someone just diving in. To solve this I designed a view of search results for those looking for a key article or asset from any time period.