Gaia Black Friday Campaign

Black Friday was Gaia Interactive's largest sale event of the year. Working from the art director's brief and key illustration, I carried the 2018 campaign end to end, from concept and visual design through the coded event page. I owned the title treatment and designed site banners, email graphics, and social posts, all pointing to a central event page. I coded that page's front end in HTML and CSS so users could filter sale items by type and jump straight to any day of the event. Developers then integrated it into the site, and the full campaign came together in under three weeks.

Challenge

Black Friday featured limited-time sales with a rotating selection of items. The campaign required a cohesive look across site banners, email, social posts, and the event page, all on a tight turnaround. In previous years, the event details lived in a single heavy infographic image that listed sale items only by time. Users could not filter the list, so they had to read line by line to find out whether a specific item would go on sale. The layout also did not adapt to mobile screens.

For 2018, the goal was a unified campaign where every channel led users to a central event page, which would be easy to browse, filter, and use on any device.

Visual Direction

From the art director's brief based on the event name, Divine Intervention, and an illustration of the mascot as an angel, I developed the visual direction to carry that theme across the full campaign.

The color palette was drawn directly from the illustration, so the artwork and the design read as a unified campaign. A sunrise sky with soft clouds set the scene and complemented the illustration. On the event page, the background sky gradient shifted with scroll position, giving a sense of progress through the schedule. For the title, I selected a serif typeface whose letterforms gave the event a regal, divine quality.

Solution

The campaign rolled out across site banners, email, and social posts, each carrying the same visual direction and pointing users to the event page. For the page itself, I coded a fully responsive front end using only HTML and CSS. Static images were replaced with live text that users could filter by item type and navigate by day. Developers then integrated my build into Gaia's site.

The original site is no longer live. The screenshots below are from my build.

Campaign assets

The event page, banners, emails, and social posts shared the sky, palette, and serif title, so every channel was cohesive as one event.

Filters and Quick links

Quick links let users jump straight to any day of the event. They no longer had to scroll through the full schedule to see what was on sale and when. Users could narrow the sale to a specific item type or store, making relevant deals easier to find.

Mobile-friendly

Unlike the previous year's page, the layout adapted to mobile screens. The filters and day links worked the same way across devices.

Reflection

Black Friday was the largest and most involved event page I coded at Gaia. Because I was also the one building it, my coding skills set the limits of the design. Some layouts and features, including an idea from a coworker, were beyond my coding knowledge, so I had to design around what I knew how to build.

Today I would let the design lead. I would prototype the more ambitious ideas quickly with AI tools and test them before committing to a full build. I would also give the schedule a clearer visual structure so each day and item is easier to scan.