News, in context.

You may be surprised how it makes you think differently about headline news.
The New York Times
Overview

Timeline connects the dots between where we are, and how we got here. Embodying – then surpassing – the best in atomized news, Timeline weaves together current events with rich historical timelines. Intuitive web and mobile interfaces pair with exclusive content from an award-winning editorial team, immersing readers in a digital experience that surprises and entertains.

Role
  • Design & Development
  • App & Web Development
  • Marketing & PR
  • Product Strategy & Direction
Deliverables
  • Web application
  • iOS 8 app
  • Curation Tools
  • Context Engine
  • Authoring Tools
  • Responsive web
Press Highlights
" Help us understand what links us, not what divides us – bring people together and break down the walls we (or others) have put around ourselves. "
Tamer Hassanein, CEO of Timeline

Best of

2015

Featured multiple times by Apple – including as one of the twenty-five Best Apps of 2015

Best App

of January 2015

Best New App

in 88 countries

Editor's Choice

10 countries

App sessions are

2x higher

than the industry average.
Displayed on

Apple Store

iPhones across 3 continents

Timeline & Axiom Zen

The Timeline team approached Axiom Zen with an exciting challenge: design an immersive, mobile-first platform for modern audiences to explore human history.

First, we had to determine how to make human history manageable. We looked to Wikipedia, which collects over 500M monthly views. The majority of those views, we discovered, are from people seeking the history behind what is happening today.

The Art of War: A Nazi Treasure Trove 1
Has China Failed Mao’s Promise of Gender Equality? 2
How a Freed Slave Took on Napoleon... and Won 3
50 Years of Photographing Earth from Above 4
Venus in Plaster: The Long, Weird Story of Mannequins 5
50 Years of Photographing Earth from Above 6

When people research current events, they seek context. We set out to empower people to explore history – anywhere, any time – by adding context to today’s news. The concept for Timeline was born.

Harnessing big data for content discovery

In addition to designing a beautiful responsive web browsing experience and an Apple-featured iOS app, Axiom Zen worked with the Timeline team to develop a suite of intelligence products backing up the consumer experiences.

For more efficient news discovery, we use natural language processing and semantic data sets to review and understand articles, quickly providing context that Timeline’s editors can use to supercharge their writing. Timeline’s technology discerns not only what events are being referenced, but also how those events relate to one another in the grand scheme of history.

To facilitate editorial calendars and the end-to-end publishing cycle, we developed a custom CMS. And to accelerate the research and editorial process, we built custom Authoring and Curation tools specially adapted to the Timeline format and workflow.

Timeline’s editorial staff can discover news, write content, and publish stories more beautifully, and more efficiently, than ever before possible inside a media company.
“ It makes everything into an epic. ”
Fast Company

Timelines were designed to evoke the tactility of flipping through cards. Though saturated with history, the reading experience needed to feel fluid and buoyant.

Responsive time markers keep readers located in time and space. For on-the-go reading, the Timeline View Button showcases time, place, and event. These and other referenceable design details – all written entirely in Swift – enable a seamless, at-a-glance exploration of human history.

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