Fish Farming - McKinsey for Kids

Portfolio | Links: Launch Project

Explaing fish farming in a kid-friendly way.

I loved working on this project. It’s a fish-themed explainer about McKinsey. It has fantastic storytelling, top-notch illustration, slick animation, and makes learning fun!

The most rewarding part of this project was working with a fanastic, multidisciplinary team. I worked with an illustrator, designer, several story-focused edtiors, web producers, and publishing stakeholders. The vision of this project was fluid, but the desire to market to a non-traditional audience was constant and very exciting. I also enjoyed the vibrancy of the fish theme, from the seafood illustrations to the fish farm exploration.

From a technical perspective, it was a prime opportunity to flex my front-end muscles (and get a little sore afterwards!) Carousels, scrollytelling, animation, grid layouts, mobile responsiveness: this was a masterclass in what it takes to be a competent front-end developer in 2020. This project is the final exam I’d never thought I’d pass two years ago, and I somehow pulled it off.

One of my coworkers described what made this project so special – that the team that worked on it was horizontal (i.e. there was a large breadth of skills), as opposed to vertical (a team with a narrowly-defined skillset). I really agree with that statement. It felt great to work with others so talented at other domains of the design process, and make a final product so deep and rich.

This wasn’t the type of project I could have excelled at as a beginner, but rather an undertaking I grew into after I gained experience. Because I cleared some hurdles in my web development journey, I was finally confident enough to embrace the collaborative nature of this project while feeling sure (enough!) that I could deliver on my end.

Despite being aimed at kids, I think the project embraces a more general audience as well. Data viz can get in the weeds sometimes, and I find this project appeals to a different part of the brain than more traditional data-rich material. Who doesn’t love a fish-themed American Gothic?