The New York Times Paywall

How do you sell an online service that people were used to getting for free? The New York Times did so in the spring or 2011 with a lot of fanfare and press. But with pretty much no guide or successful model to follow, there was a lot of exploration before they decided to stay with their existing design and style.

I joined the “paywall” team in January, 2011, and was asked to create a number of designs that pushed the boundaries of what readers expected of the paper, while still somehow keeping existing conventions in mind. These are some of my designs for product landing pages, product overview grids, and banner ads.

In addition to working on these designs, I also built many of the final pages and assets that were used at launch. They’re still used today, modified again and again to reflect new offers, branding, prices and more.