Starch Madness
Branding and visual design for Serious Eats’s 2020 pasta bracket.
Company: Serious Eats
Project Date: 2020
Role: Design lead responsible for UX, branding, visual identity, and creation of image assets for site and social media
Team: VP of product, engineer, food editors, visual director
Project Overview
Starch Madness was an interactive March Madness-style bracket tournament of 64 pasta shapes. Fans voted for their favorites on Instagram over a period of 4 weeks in March 2020, when people were stuck at home and sports were canceled. I worked with the Serious Eats editorial and creative teams to develop a visual identity, pasta glossary page, and branded creative assets for the site and social media. The bracket provided pasta fans around the world with a joy and fun during frightening times. Serious Eats hit a peak in web traffic and engagement that spring, and Starch Madness became a yearly tradition afterwards.
Objective
The initial concept for Starch Madness started in late 2019 as a lighthearted, campy parallel to March Madness. The editorial team wanted to create a package of high quality web and Instagram content that would amuse fans while elevating the brand. I had to make the bracket graphics, Instagram stories, and Instagram slides while the culinary team was tasked with churning out pasta recipes.
The full bracket in the final round
Visual Identity and Asset Design
We focused on the adjectives “fun, vibrant, witty, educational, and content-focused” for art direction and styling, which resulted in bold, contrasting colors and a funky shapes. I did not make it look too sporty in order to attract a wider audience.
I created digital photo collages in Sketch and Adobe Illustrator for the bracket graphic, Instagram stories, and Instagram slides. While we were lucky to have finished photographing 64 pasta shapes in the studio before lockdown, the shift to remote work prevented me from requesting re-dos or additional photos.
Instagram Slides and Stories
The Pasta Glossary
While much of the action took place on Instagram, I also designed a simple educational tool for readers to learn more about each pasta shape on the website. The glossary featured around 70 pasta shapes in alphabetical order. Clicking on a card opened up a modal with the translated name, classification, and suggested recipe use. The pasta glossary helped readers become informed bracket voters and drove traffic back to recipe pages.
Impact
The Starch Madness package, combined with pandemic factors, resulted in Serious Eats achieving a peak in traffic and social engagement that spring. When the world shut down overnight, many people were forced to learn to cook and were desperate for any sort of distraction from the unfolding events. Fans thanked us and said that voting for the next round of pastas shapes was something they looked forward to each week.
Starch Madness provided our team a sense of purpose in educating and entertaining our audience during dark times. As silly as it was, Starch Madness reaffirmed that [arguing about] food has the power to bring people together and provide comfort even when things are rough.
Spoiler: the winner was cavatappi.