Role

Lead Brand & Graphic Designer

Overview

The 500px Global Photography Awards is the company’s largest annual international campaign, receiving over 110,000 submissions from photographers worldwide. As the sole brand and graphic designer at 500px, I led the full visual direction of the campaign — shaping every touchpoint from digital experiences to printed materials and promotional content.

My Contribution & Responsibilities

• Creative Direction: Established the visual identity and design language for the entire awards campaign, ensuring consistency across all platforms and formats.

• Digital Experience Design: Designed the responsive landing page, working closely with developers to translate visuals into an intuitive user experience.

• Marketing & Social Assets: Produced all promotional graphics, including social posts and reels, display ads, motion graphics, newsletter assets, and blog visuals.

• Print Design: Designed and produced a high-quality printed photobook featuring the award-winning images; handled layout, typography, and press-ready files.

• Brand Consistency: Ensured that the full campaign maintained a cohesive, polished look while accommodating sponsor brand requirements.

• Cross-Team Collaboration: Coordinated with marketing, product, photographers, sponsors, and leadership to align on visuals, approvals, and messaging.

• Community Engagement: Introduced new promotional strategies — such as motion graphics and ambassador-led reels — to encourage global participation.

Challenges

• Managing Multiple Stakeholders: Balancing the needs of sponsors, internal teams, and photographers while keeping the campaign visually unified.

• Multi-Format Execution: Designing across digital, print, and event formats required a strong, adaptable visual system that felt seamlessly connected.

• High-Volume Assets: With the scale of the campaign, efficient asset production and organization were crucial to meeting deadlines.

Outcome

The result was a cohesive, storytelling-driven campaign that elevated the 500px brand and celebrated the global photography community. The photobook and campaign materials were widely shared by award-winning photographers—highlighting the impact of the awards and strengthening the platform’s position as a leading photography community.

Project Impact

• Over 110,000 global submissions

• Strong positive response from participating photographers and ambassadors

• Increased engagement through new motion-based promotional strategies

• Multi-platform consistency strengthened the brand and elevated the prestige of the awards