Design @ AllSides | Joseph Ratliff

A group of graphic illustrations, ads, and social media posts for AllSides

Overview

This is a collection of work created throughout my four years at AllSides, a news media tech company focused on political polarization. It includes illustrative graphics, data visualizations, informational social media content, and other branded assets.

Other projects included UX research on the design of topics pages, UI design for location-based personalization, consulting on AI bias analysis tools, and collaborating to design a user-facing hub for political common ground survey data.

I advocated for design and user research at all levels of the content stack, leading the company to invest more in effective design for new website features and social media posts. This allowed me to influence the company's design direction, as new hires used assets I had created.

Beyond design, my role at the company was often to critically analyze current events, editorial standards, and bias rating decisions. I asked nuanced questions in internal deliberations and communicated complex ideas in daily published news content.

My Role

Content Designer, Graphic Designer, UX/UI Designer

Time

2020–2024

Organization

AllSides

Tools

Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Figma, Canva, Drupal

INTERACTIVE CHARTS FOR NEWS MEDIA ANALYSIS

DATA VISUALIZATION WITH FLOURISH

I used Flourish to create a handful of interactive charts for an article analyzing web traffic data for the top 100 most popular news websites in the US.

Coworkers had collected the data, inspired by a previous article I had written a couple of years earlier on the topic. I learned Flourish from a coworker who had effectively implemented the data visualization platform in articles and other pages on the website.

REFRESHING THE BRAND'S SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE

TWITTER & FACEBOOK HEADER REDESIGN

I led the redesign process of a news website’s Facebook and Twitter profile banner images.
‍
‍The lead stakeholder noticed that the banner images on the company’s Twitter and Facebook profiles were a bit outdated. She wanted new images created and was “down to experiment with this,” but required that the new design included two of the company’s slogans.

‍I researched competitive best practices and submitted a handful of options for the team to review. I then worked with various team members to iterate and come up with a solution the lead stakeholder was happy with.

‍I conducted a competitive analysis of other news platforms’ Twitter banners.

Key findings:

The company’s direct “media bias” competitors also had outdated banners.
Established news organizations tended to use photographs of newsrooms, office buildings, and cities that reminded users of their established brand identity.
Some newer tech-savvy news outlets highlighted their apps and used centered text to promote a brand slogan.
Some outlets used more artistic banners or brand/logo signifiers.

Since the company was fully remote, there were no photos to use for the “established media” approach. The best opportunities for emulation were tech-based platforms and brand/logo signifiers.

Established news organization highlights newsroom

Tech-savvy news organization highlights mobile presence

Web-native newsletter focuses on their brand

I developed mockups using Adobe Photoshop to visually remind users of brand value ("L" and "R" bias rating graphics and red/blue colors).

‍3 of my 5 mockups took inspiration from “tech-savvy” competitors, since that model most aligned with AllSides' brand identity.

A group of twitter banners designed for AllSides

When I submitted the mockups for team feedback, I received positive reactions for two of the options.

I used the feedback to develop a final version, which was approved by the lead stakeholder and added to the company's social media profiles.

When implemented, I realized that Facebook moved the profile photo to the middle and overlapped the banner on mobile, creating an awkward overlap. With the stakeholder’s approval, I removed the center logo and slogan, keeping the background brand-signifying graphics.

The final Twitter banner. Still in use as of June 2025

This experience reemphasized to me the importance of designing for different screen sizes — just because a design works in a desktop browser doesn’t mean it will look the same on mobile. Fortunately, the graphics I made helped others at the company create designs for merch and other uses.

Smart, Dynamic, & Social-Savvy Branded Content

Content & Graphic Design for Web & Social Media

Graphics for AllSides blog articles

AllSides presents itself as a smart, tech-savvy organization focused on everyday Americans. To support this brand image, I designed graphics with a colorful and approachable digital-scrapbook style. This helped AllSides content feel like it belonged in the same tier as competing online tech-savvy sites like The Verge and Axios. Several of these images accompany articles I wrote.

AllSides brands itself as a smart, tech-savvy, online-first outlet. To support this brand image, I designed graphics with a colorful and approachable digital-scrapbook style. This helped AllSides content feel like it belonged in the same tier as competing online tech-savvy sites like The Verge and Axios. Several of these images accompany articles I wrote.

Graphic of two horizontal arrows forming a stylized letter Z, with a blue arrow pointing left on top and a red arrow pointing right below.

An illustration of a magnifying glass over a globe

Collage showing Benjamin Franklin, a group of colonial figures, and an old printing press with text reading 'The History of Media Bias in America | Part 1 The 1700s' on a torn paper background.

Collage featuring historical figures and illustrations representing 1800s American media with text 'The History of American Media Bias | Part 2 The 1800s'.

Collage with vintage radios, microphones, communication tower, and old newspaper headline about Roosevelt with text 'The History of American Media Bias | Part 3 The 1900s-1950s' on a brown textured background.

Old television displaying the phrase 'The Medium Is The Message' surrounded by logos of major U.S. news networks, with text reading 'The History of American Media Bias | Part 4 The 1950s-2000s' on torn paper.

Graphics for Instagram Posts

When I was at the company, we prioritized Instagram because we had the largest following there. Along with regular posts about news and opinion articles, we also occasionally posted brand-aligned promotional or informational content.

Seasonal media literacy Instagram post series