When the Seahawks came back from the dead during the NFC championship with less than 2 minutes on the clock, the entire city of Seattle lost its mind all at once. We had witnessed a miracle. And at Hum, the way we celebrate a miracle is to make an interactive site dedicated to Marshawn Lynch; our fleet-footed hero; our Beast Mode of few, but incredible, words.
It felt like a chance to make something that we as fans would have a good time using. And what could be better than an illustrated soundboard with the best of Marshawn Lynch’s brilliantly brief quotes to the media? With the Superbowl coming up quick, we worked fast to make SpeaksMode happen.
SpeaksMode was created in 2 days. This included design, illustration, audio, and development.
When it went up, we were stoked to see how many Seahawks fans started using it. Within 2 days of its launch, SpeaksMode had generated 20,000 unique visitors, and had been featured on SB Nation, Seattle Times, Reddit, SportsNet, Oregon Live, Seahawks.net, and FanCred.
We decided it’d be fun to do even more. After Media Day, when Beast Mode famously replied to every reporter “I’m just here so I won’t get fined,” it became clear that SpeaksMode needed an update. Within a few hours, we had added four more bytes with unique illustrations.
SpeaksMode has outlived the SuperBowl (we can’t talk about it yet, because of collective sadness), which is what we hoped for. As fans, we wanted to make something that celebrates our Seahawks, as designers we wanted to make it look and feel great.