Website for an Elite Sports and NIL Agency

Design and development of a dark, editorial brand site for an Atlanta based sports, entertainment, and NIL advisory firm. Built with React and Vite.

Designer and Developer

Web Design · Web Development · React · Vite · UI/UX · Responsive Design · Branding Support · Figma

First Edition LLC is a multidisciplinary sports and entertainment advisory firm in Atlanta, representing athletes across football, basketball, and NIL deals. They came in with a strong identity and a serious client roster, but nothing online that matched the level of talent they represent.

The brief was simple to say and hard to execute: the site had to feel like a firm that negotiates franchise extensions, not a template with a logo dropped in. I handled the full scope, from visual direction through to shipped code.

Three problems stacked on top of each other:

Two audiences, one site. Athletes evaluating representation want to see who else is on the roster and whether the firm understands their world. Brands want to see credibility and process. The site had to serve both without diluting either.

Ten services, no clutter. The firm operates across ten disciplines, from contract strategy to estate planning to performance coaching. Listing ten cards on a page reads as a menu, not expertise.

A young roster. Three represented athletes at launch, with more coming. The talent section needed to feel intentional at that size and scale up without a redesign.

Editorial over corporate. I anchored the design in a near black palette with a high contrast serif display face and wide tracked uppercase labels. Photography does the emotional work: motion blurred game footage in the hero, real locker room and training imagery through the services section. Everything else stays quiet so the images and the numbers carry weight.

Progressive disclosure for the service list. Rather than ten cards, The Craft page is a numbered editorial index. Each row shows the discipline and a one line summary, expanding on click for the full detail. Hovering surfaces a supporting image on the right. It reads like a table of contents for a firm that knows what it does, and it scales to twenty disciplines just as cleanly as ten.

Designing for growth. The Collection page uses a card grid where the fourth slot is a deliberate "Coming Soon: The Next Edition" tile. Same pattern on the brand partners grid. Three athletes reads as curated instead of thin, and adding a fourth is a data change, not a layout change.

A working contact path. The contact page pairs direct channels (email, phone, office, Instagram) with a form that routes inquiries by type: athlete representation, brand partnership, and general. The form is wired to real transactional email delivery through Resend, so serious inquiries land in the inbox instead of relying on a mailto handoff.

Five page React application on Vite: Home, Culture, Craft, Collection, Contact

Custom component system for the accordion service index, athlete cards, brand grid, stat counters, and the animated marquee of partner brands

Full responsive implementation from 375px through large desktop

Scroll triggered reveals and hover states tuned to stay subtle at this level of contrast

Contact form with client side validation, inquiry type routing, and Resend API email delivery

Image optimization and lazy loading to keep a photography heavy dark site fast

Semantic markup, accessible focus states, and per page meta for search

A single site that reads credibly to both athletes and brand partners

Service architecture that communicates ten disciplines without overwhelming a first time visitor

Roster and partner sections that grow through content updates rather than dev work

A live contact pipeline replacing manual email handoffs

Fast, stable, and low maintenance for a small team with no developer on staff

Live site: https://www.firsteditionllc.com/