Featured case study

Turning Shutterstock Studios’ website into a credible sales tool

Executive summary

Shutterstock Studios had expanded beyond traditional production into immersive storytelling, virtual production, gaming, and generative AI. Its website still presented a narrower business and reinforced confusion with Shutterstock’s stock marketplace. It no longer gave prospective clients and internal teams a credible destination for the work.

I led an eight-month redesign that made the portfolio the primary storytelling device, clarified Studios as an end-to-end custom production partner, and established a scalable experience within Shutterstock’s design system and Contentful CMS. The work is currently in QA ahead of launch.

Timeline

8 months

My role

Sole senior product designer · Project and design lead

Core team

Product designer and contractor · Frontend Enablement · Brand Creative

Business shift

Expanded creative capabilities

The website had not kept pace with the services Studios could offer.

Design strategy

Portfolio-first storytelling

The work itself became the clearest proof of Studios’ value and range.

Delivery

Scalable and launch-ready

The redesign moved into QA on Shutterstock’s design system and Contentful.

The Business
Shift

The company had evolved faster than its digital presence

Studios partners directly with brands to create custom productions from concept through delivery. As the business expanded into new formats and technologies, the existing site made that breadth difficult to understand and sometimes reinforced the incorrect assumption that Studios produced assets for Shutterstock’s stock library.

The gap affected more than perception. Traffic and engagement were low, teams lacked confidence using the website at events or in sales conversations, and custom presentations replaced the site as the primary way to show capabilities.

Audience problem

Visitors could not quickly understand the end-to-end offer or distinguish custom production from stock content.

Business problem

The outdated site underrepresented current work and was not being used to support prospective-client conversations.

Positioning problem

A broad set of services needed to feel cohesive rather than making Studios appear unfocused.

Ownership &
Leadership

Leading both product definition and design execution

I owned the entire design process and led the project largely independently, with support from a product-design contractor at different stages. Because the product manager was a marketing manager filling the role because of personnel constraints, I also guided product definition, requirements, priorities, and PRD development.

Conducted stakeholder interviews, competitive analysis, and a site audit
Defined information architecture, typography, layouts, and section priority
Facilitated concept reviews and design critiques
Advocated for new design-system components where existing patterns limited the vision
Led handoff discussions and guided Engineering toward QA

Defining
Success

Make Studios understandable, memorable, and usable as a client destination

Without launch data yet, success needed to be defined through the quality of the story, stakeholder confidence, implementation readiness, and the site’s ability to scale.

Clarify custom production

Prospective clients should quickly understand that Studios creates original, end-to-end productions. It does not create stock-library content.

Let the work prove the value

A large mosaic of current portfolio work should demonstrate breadth without making the offer feel unfocused.

Build internal confidence

Studios teams should have a destination they trust at events and in prospective-client conversations.

Create a durable foundation

New offerings needed to be easy to surface within reusable components and the existing CMS.

Discovery &
Alignment

Creating a shared definition of the problem before exploring solutions

Stakeholder interviews, competitive research, and content audits revealed where expectations differed across Studios, Brand, Marketing, and Engineering. Two insights became the foundation for the redesign: portfolio work should be the primary storytelling asset, and services needed a clearer structure.

Previous Shutterstock Studios homepage hero — The previous experience emphasized the brand but did not clearly communicate the breadth of Studios’ offer.

From Structure
to Vision

Exploring broadly, then converging around the portfolio

Stakeholders intentionally provided minimal creative direction, so I used a staged process to separate structural decisions from visual preference.

1. Establish the information architecture

I first defined the homepage hierarchy and the order in which Studios should explain its offer.

Early homepage structure

2. Explore distinct personalities

Grayscale, bento, and dark-mode concepts helped stakeholders react to complete directions rather than isolated components.

Concept exploration

3. Refine around the strongest principle

Across directions, the portfolio consistently emerged as the most persuasive storytelling mechanism.

Homepage and supporting-page refinement

Strategic Design
Decisions

Translate the rebrand into experience attributes

Studios resisted parts of the company-wide rebrand. I aligned teams around shared attributes such as large typography, bleeding imagery, boldness, and polish. This kept the discussion focused on the experience rather than brand compliance.

Extend the design system selectively

I designed the ideal experience first, then mapped sections to reusable components where they fit and advocated for new patterns such as the image accordion when they did not.

Keep Contentful

Although Studios wanted a more flexible CMS, the team retained Contentful for cost and scaling reasons. I adapted components and content structure to work within it.

Protect performance

Looping hover videos and some animation concepts were removed when their loading and implementation cost outweighed the benefit.

Cross-functional
Direction

Turning competing preferences into an achievable product direction

I facilitated recurring workshops with Engineering and the Design System team to determine which components could be reused, which needed modification, and which should be added to the system. I also aligned Studios leadership, Brand, and Marketplace stakeholders around the navigation, visual identity, and Contentful decision.

The final direction bent where delivery and organizational consistency required it without losing the portfolio-first vision that made the redesign valuable.

Final
Experience

The redesigned website presents Studios as a premium creative partner through portfolio-first storytelling, clearer service communication, simplified navigation, and a stronger information hierarchy.

Final Shutterstock Studios experience

Launch Readiness
& Measurement

Using the evidence available before launch

The experience is currently in QA, so this case study does not claim customer or lead-generation outcomes that have not yet been measured. The immediate result is a launch-ready site that stakeholders believe more accurately represents the breadth and quality of Studios.

After launch, the team plans to evaluate engagement, portfolio exploration, lead generation, and the website’s effectiveness as a client-facing sales experience.

Retrospective

The most important leadership work happened before the final visuals: creating a shared vision across groups with different goals, then translating that vision into decisions the organization could support and Engineering could deliver.

What the project strengthened

Leading product definition without a traditional product-management structure
Influencing across Brand, Marketing, Product, and Engineering
Balancing creative ambition with scalable systems

What comes next

Validate whether prospects understand the service offer more quickly
Measure portfolio engagement and lead generation after launch
Use performance evidence to guide future motion and media decisions

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