A senior design partner,
embedded across the portfolio
Howard Hughes develops some of the most ambitious communities in America. For eighteen months, alongside my other clients, I worked as an extension of their in-house team, on everything from advertising campaigns and community websites to brand guidelines and their new corporate site.
Engagement
I spent two or three days a week inside the Howard Hughes team, moving between advertising campaigns, community websites, internal brand tools, and the design system that underpinned it all. Most of it came to me as a problem and a deadline rather than a spec; how to get there was left to me.
A design system for the website
The design system behind the website was mine end to end, built as two Figma libraries: one for foundations, covering everything from brand, color, and type to spacing and grids, and one for components. Together they gave the small in-house digital team the patterns and rules to ship consistently without a designer in the room for every decision.
Brand guidelines, moved online
Working alongside the brand team, I co-created Howard Hughes' online brand guidelines, covering everything from positioning, logo, and color to photography, graphics, and written materials. Online, structured, and searchable, they replaced the kind of brand PDF that gets opened once and forgotten.
Corporate site
The largest single piece was the new corporate website: strategy, direction, and design, from the ground up. The site had to hold a lot: the company story, leadership, careers, press, impact, and dedicated sections for each flagship community, from The Woodlands and Bridgeland to Ward Village, Summerlin, Columbia, and Teravalis. I designed the full set of page templates, responsive from large desktop down to mobile.
Unfortunately, during the build, leadership changes and a company restructuring meant the site was never released. It's shown here as designed.
Staying power
Companies let contractors go all the time; it's the easiest working relationship there is to end. This one lasted a year and a half, and only ended when I moved on.
Jason is an exceptionally talented digital designer. He made significant contributions to several high-profile projects for Howard Hughes, consistently bringing strong strategic thinking, thoughtful creative judgment, and an excellent eye for detail.”
Julie Allen
Then SVP Marketing & Brand, Howard Hughes
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The Framework
Branding · Product design · Web design