Publet was a content marketing platform that transformed static content — white papers, reports, branded editorial — into interactive HTML5 publications viewable across devices. Smart Media Creative partnered with the Publet team to help design and develop the product. My role was on the design side: creating publication layouts and visual templates that demonstrated what the platform could do with real content, including work for The Pew Charitable Trusts' ocean conservation reporting.

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Approach

The Pew publication needed to feel like serious editorial work — not a tech demo. The content covered ocean conservation policy, shark protections, and international environmental governance, and the design had to carry that weight. Two-column article layouts with a clear typographic hierarchy, pull quotes set in a contrasting style, and photography treated at full scale rather than as decoration.

The full-bleed whale shark spread is the strongest example of how the platform could differentiate from a PDF or a standard web article. The image fills the viewport with a thumbnail strip along the bottom for navigation — closer to a National Geographic feature than a report. The slideshow embed on the article spread demonstrated another interactive capability without breaking the reading flow.

The constraint was designing within the platform's layout engine — these weren't static mockups but templates that had to render correctly in Publet's interactive viewer across tablet and desktop. That meant understanding both the visual standard the content demanded and the technical boundaries the platform imposed, and finding the overlap.

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Outcomes

• Publication designs were used to demonstrate Publet's capabilities to prospective clients including Dell, Ogilvy, and Orange Telecom
• The Pew Charitable Trusts content served as the primary proof-of-concept for the editorial publishing use case
• Designs demonstrated platform capabilities — full-bleed imagery, embedded slideshows, interactive navigation — within real client content