Serial Season 3
Documentary podcast from This American Life

Studio Rodrigo has had a long relationship with This American Life. When the studio was asked to design a website for a small, new podcast named Serial in 2014, it wasn’t a big deal. Obviously, it later became a very big deal, as Serial season 1 became insanely popular across the US and the world.

We were happy to continue the relationship and design seasons 2 and 3 as well as a few other standalone podcasts produced by the same team, like S-Town and Nice White Parents.

I was very fortunate to be able to work on the design for Serial’s season 3!

The question on everyone’s mind was "what is this season about?" and, although we were designing it, we didn’t actually know. All we were told was that, unlike seasons 1 and 2, season 3 would not be about one storyline, but many.

Whitney Dangerfield, the digital and creative director for This American Life, had a great vision.

Each episode would be represented by a mural in a location relevant to the plot. Moth Studio worked with illustrators and animators in order to create 3D models of the scenes and added the illustrations on top.

Read more about the art of season 3.

We wanted the design of the website to highlight these beautiful animations. We had no idea what any of the content was about, but we trusted Whitney’s plan.

It was a pleasure to work alongside Ritik Dholakia (strategy), Khoi Uong (creative director), Ben Averill, and Juliette Wang (visual/product design). Ben and I were joined by Juliette, a brilliant design intern working with us that summer. 

It was great to take a break from the corporate work for a bit and have fun with a much more dynamic and visual project. Serial season 3 was a huge success with more than 50 million downloads and we were happy with how the website turned out.

We even got a shoutout in the podcast!