Coronavirus Tracker is a daily email that delivers Covid data for the cities and counties you choose. It’s the inbox counterpart to the onsite tracker, where you manage your places. We sent the first version of the email in Dec. 2020, and evolved it throughout the pandemic, adding information like risk levels, hospitalization rates, and vaccination rates. Sign up here.

I designed the email in close collaboration with the Newsroom engineers and journalists who won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for public service for “filling a data vacuum that helped local governments, healthcare providers, businesses and individuals to be better prepared and protected.” As of early 2022, the email reached well over a million subscribers.

The charts and info-graphics are dynamically generated in the email using html, which improved our ability to respond to shifting news priorities and new data types. It’s the first use of dynamic info-graphics in email at The Times — a capability developed by my engineering partner, Joey Lee.

Programs help people reach specific goals with daily bite-size activities. I joined the team to formalize the reader journey, content strategy, and UX after the first pilots.

Through diary studies and new prototypes I learned that giving readers ways to modify an activity is crucial to support on-the-fly customization for unique individual contexts. Editorially-driven modifications are also a much more sustainable path from a production point of view, compared to product-oriented customization with up-front onboarding, which can also lead to user drop-off. Based on those and other insights, I standardized the program experience to be more user friendly, to be more efficient for editors and art directors, and to more flexibly support future unknown program topics.

Between 2019 and 2022, programs were used across the Newsroom and by hundreds of thousands of readers. Programs have since been folded into other more standard NYT formats, like newsletters and article templates, which have inherited many of the design principles spearheaded by Programs.

I designed and produced an explainer video series with The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice to tell the story of their Behavioral Health Task Force initiatives to the public. The video featured here introduces the topic of Supportive Housing. It details just a few of the challenges faced by those most at risk of cycling through shelters and jail — and how Supportive Housing can break that cycle.

The project was developed in close partnership with MOCJ policy experts and the creative team that I recruited and managed — with motion graphics by Chadwick Whitehead, music by Matt Stanfield, and voiceover by Doug Schuetz.

For nearly 350,000 New Yorkers, public assistance is critical for maintaining access to shelter and food. But the application process for assistance can be convoluted and intimidating. Successfully applying is just the beginning: to continue receiving benefits you have to keep track of regular appointments, complicated paperwork, and strict requirements. If you have trouble navigating the system you risk losing the benefits you depend on and are eligible for.

As part of the Center for Urban Pedagogy’s  Making Policy Public program, I designed this guide to the welfare application and retention processes with my collaborator Kevin Wade Shaw. With CUP, we partnered with the Urban Justice Center‘s Safety Net Project to research, synthesize, and clarify NYC’s welfare system. Since the first print run, the guide has since been distributed to thousands of people through NYC’s public assistance offices.

Blue Ridge Labs is an incubator for building digital services that support New Yorkers experiencing poverty. As a Design Fellow I joined a small team with an engineer and a product manager.

After attending community programming and speaking with constituents about their experiences, we saw a pattern where New Yorkers find opportunities — like vocational certification and financial planning courses — but face significant barriers to matriculation and completion. After speaking with the program coordinators who run those programs, we identified a key communications gap between participants and service providers.

With our pilot partners we prototyped and built a lightweight SMS-to-email tool to close that gap. After submitting their cell number, participants can ask 1:1 questions and get notified about program updates and milestones. On the other side, coordinators receive and send messages through their preferred medium — email — and create and manage cohorts throughout the program journey. In our pilot tests we saw up to a 10X increase in 2-way communication between participants and service providers, with coordinators spending as little as 1/20th the time on outreach.

Identity, title wall, and interior graphics for the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition 194X to 9/11: American Architects and the City, in the Architecture and Design galleries.

The show presents “design projects for a hypothetical postwar American city, [which] rethink both urban community life and the relationship between architecture and urban planning.”

Completed with the MoMA Design Studio.

Identity and motion design for the pre-exhibition phase of Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, which examined new architectural possibilities for American cities and suburbs in the context of the foreclosure crisis.

Development included brand direction and identity, illustration, and motion storyboarding. Animation by Rob Chapman. Project incorporates some of of MTWTF’s pre-existing assets originally created for an associated Buell Center publication.

Completed with the MoMA Design Studio.

Identity and motion design for the pre-exhibition phase of Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, which examined new architectural possibilities for American cities and suburbs in the context of the foreclosure crisis.

Development included brand direction and identity, illustration, and motion storyboarding. Animation by Rob Chapman. Project incorporates some of of MTWTF’s pre-existing assets originally created for an associated Buell Center publication.

Completed with the MoMA Design Studio.

Design and design-support for the Museum of Modern Art’s print ephemera and publications. In coordination with education and out-reach programs, curatorial departments, and special programming.

Completed with the MoMA Design Studio.

Design of these vegetable education sheets for Just Food‘s Farm-to-Pantry program. The pads of tear-off double-sided sheets have been distributed through NYC food pantries.

As described by Just Foods, the Farm-to-Pantry program “helps food pantries and other emergency food programs make fresh, nutritious, locally grown food available to families and individuals in need. In addition to providing vegetables for the city’s most vulnerable residents, the program helps build the knowledge and capacity of food pantry staff and clients through cooking demonstrations, farm visits, and other educational opportunities.”

Illustrations by Claire Typaldos

Identity for NYC’s Center for Architecture‘s 2015 annual Housing Design Awards program.

Identity and art-direction for Highland — an NYC menswear brand that operated between 2009–2015. Work produced in collaboration with Highland founder, Lizzie Owens.

10 Newspapers comprising the New Museum catalog for the exhibition, The Last Newspaper. Produced and edited by the Barcelona-based curatorial team Latitudes. Each issue designed with Chad Kloepfer—1 a week for 10 weeks.

“…If the artwork assembled in the galleries is dedicated to deconstructing the power and possibilities of the press, then the invited participants are engaged in finding new (and perhaps more holistic) ways of describing the world.”

Revised and Expanded edition of Scenes From the City Filmmaking in New York City. Edited by James Sanders, published by Rizzoli. Produced with NYC’s Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment.

 
Designed with Aron Fay at Pentagram, art direction by Michael Bierut.

Information graphics and illustration design throughout the Salt Lake City Museum of Natural History. From lava flows to languages.

The graphics and illustrations work in concert with the installations—providing context, minute detail, cypher keys, and activity prompts.

Completed at Ralph Appelbaum Associates and with specialists from the SLC MNH.