Public Media Group of Southern California
Role: Lead Visual Designer

For: Web
Tool: Figma

The Public Media Group of Southern California (PMGSC) is a non-profit broadcasting organization operating two TV stations and a non-commercial satellite television channel. PMGSC partnered with AREA 17 for a redesign of their three sites: KCET, LinkTV, and PBS SoCal.

︎︎︎KCET
︎︎︎LinkTV
︎︎︎PBS SoCal

Building a flexible design system

This project was uniquely challenging because we had to design a system that could be applied across all three of PMGSC’s websites, despite each having its own unique brand identity. Because KCET had recently undergone a robust rebrand, the KCET-specific pages were designed to incorporate all of its new brand elements, while the shared templates were designed to be easily be skinned and used across the other two sites.

The shared templates incorporate one primary brand color and one CTA and icon color for each site, with the exception of PBS SoCal, which uses its southern california orange for icons and buttons and blue for links.

Above: Shows landing page template, applied across all three of PMGSC’s sites.

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Because the Collections pages are unique to the KCET site, this was a perfect opportunity to introduce high brand moments in a way that makes sense in the context of the broader system. Although yellow is used as the primary color across the KCET site, it is replaced by other brand colors in the collections pages, creating a clear visual distinction between them.

The hero carousels were designed to incorporate one of KCET’s primary brand elements, a grid-based layout with patterns representative of the letters in K-C-E-T.

Each of the three sites features different types of content, including articles, video clips, and episodes.

Above: Article template, applied across all three of PMGSC’s sites.

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