CherryPicks

Who is evaluating and deciding what’s good in film? Nearly 80% of critics published in major media outlets are male, and 90% of the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are written by men, even though women are half the viewing audience. This has implications beyond ticket sales, affecting what’s being talked about, what’s being awarded, and what kind of films are made in the future.

CherryPicks introduced a new and needed voice - a movie review platform promoting critics and writers who examine entertainment through a female lens. Together with the CherryPicks team, we helped refine the brand, designed and developed the website, and supported their launch.

We started by working with the CherryPicks internal team to define the CherryPicks brand as a powerful new voice in media--they needed to speak the language of other established platforms, while introducing something totally new. Designing the visual identity, we had to balance seriousness with the playfulness of entertainment, create a sense of femininity without veering into female design tropes, and create a unique icon-based rating system.

The platform had to contain many different kinds of content: overall ratings, various scales and scores, as well as long-form editorial content. We needed to enable users to see things at-a-glance or dig deeper; and to balance their ability to find something specific or discover something new. We started with the mobile experience, knowing it’s how most of our audience consumes reviews and recommendations.