Our goal was to make launching and evolving brands faster, cheaper, and more expressive. The result was a scalable platform built on Chorus, with reusable components, configurable design tokens, and flexible templates that supported individuality without fragmenting the ecosystem.

Impact at a glance

• 8 brands unified on a single Chorus platform

• 300+ SB Nation team sites migrated

• Mobile performance improved 50% faster load times

• Page weight reduced by 60–70%

• New brands could now launch in weeks, not months

The Challenge: Individuality at Scale

Vox Media’s award-winning brands—The Verge, Eater, Polygon, Curbed, Recode, Vox.com, Racked, and SB Nation—had each been custom-engineered since 2011. Every brand had bespoke layouts, CSS, and front-end logic. While this allowed for strong individual expression, it created seven discrete codebases and a near-impossible situation for iteration.

If one brand needed a new gallery format, we had to rebuild it seven times. Platform evolution slowed to a crawl. With Chorus opening to partners, we needed a system that could scale—a way to launch and evolve brands efficiently, without erasing their unique voices.

Approach: Building a Platform, Not Just Sites

1. Establishing Guiding Principles

Our north stars were scale and speed. We set out to make Chorus a platform where the cost of iteration didn’t increase with the number of brands. Every decision, from component structure to page composition, had to serve both principles.

2. Designing the Unison Framework

We built a mobile-first, reusable design framework that balanced shared structure with expressive flexibility.

• Baseline simplicity: Core templates and UI components that supported all content types

• Configurability: Brands could vary layout, typography, shape, and color without diverging from the system

• Mobile-first design: Every decision was made from the small screen out, improving usability and visual clarity

This architecture allowed us to design brands, not websites—focusing creative energy on visual language rather than reinventing patterns.

3. Evolving the Design System & Documentation

The Unison design system became the connective tissue across brands.
We documented not just components, but design principles, patterns for common editorial goals, and content and token guidelines. These principles guided how brands expressed themselves—whether through typography, color, or hierarchy—while maintaining structural coherence across the platform.

4. Performance and Engineering Collaboration

Working closely with engineering, we operated under a strict performance budget. The results:

• 50% faster load times

• 60–70% smaller page sizes

• Consistent, predictable performance across all properties

Our shared component architecture meant that every optimization benefited every brand, turning iteration into a multiplier.

5. Progressive Migration and Launches

We launched the first Unison site with Curbed in early 2016, followed by the rollout across Eater, Racked, Recode, The Verge, Vox.com, Polygon, and finally SB Nation—culminating with MMA Fighting’s relaunch.
By the end of the migration, 100% of Vox Media’s on-platform traffic was running through the unified Chorus Unison framework, bringing eight editorial brands and over 300 SB Nation team sites onto a single, scalable platform.

Results

• Unified 8 major brands and 300+ SB Nation team sites

• Reduced time-to-launch from months to weeks

• Achieved 50% faster performance across mobile and web

• Shifted company focus from maintaining sites to designing brands

• Created a sustainable foundation for platform partnerships and future expansion

Reflection

The Unison Project redefined how Vox Media built and evolved its products.
By transforming bespoke brand work into a flexible, system-driven platform, we enabled both creative differentiation and operational efficiency.

“Our focus shifted from building websites to designing brands.”

That shift, from one-off creativity to repeatable expressiveness, laid the groundwork for Vox Media’s platform era, powering not just our own brands, but future partners on Chorus.

After unifying our internal brands, we extended Chorus to power The Ringer, Funny or Die, The McElroy Family, and the Chicago Sun-Times, proving that a system built for expressive brands could scale far beyond Vox Media itself.