Sports Illustrated Eats - Website Design & Development

Overview Sports Illustrated Eats is the official food and beverage vertical of Sports Illustrated, featuring recipes, restaurant guides, and culinary content tied to sports culture. I was brought on to lead both the design and development of the website, building a fast, editorially-driven platform to support a national media launch.

My Role I handled the full scope of the project—from discovery to launch—including:

UI/UX Design: Crafted a clean, modern layout optimized for editorial content, high-res imagery, and mobile responsiveness.

Custom WordPress Development: Created a flexible theme and custom-coded editable menus to edits via an admin page.

Performance Optimization: Prioritized load speed and SEO using lightweight theme architecture, image compression, and structured schema markup.

CMS Usability: Built a user-friendly admin experience tailored to editorial staff, with reusable modules and easy-to-manage page templates.

Fully responsive design for mobile, tablet, and desktop

Custom recipe templates with ingredient blocks and step-by-step instructions

Interactive restaurant spotlight sections

Modular homepage and category layouts for flexible content curation

Integrated social sharing and email opt-ins for audience growth

Outcome The result is a visually rich, easy-to-navigate site that aligns with the prestige of the Sports Illustrated brand. The platform supports both evergreen food content and seasonal editorial campaigns, and is built to scale with future expansion into e-commerce or subscription features.