Devoted to telling the life story of Ted Kennedy, this website serves a dual purpose. It is home to The Boston Globe's seven-part series on the complicated Massachusetts senator as well as the companion site for Simon & Schuster's sprawling biography, "The Last Lion: The Fall & Rise of Ted Kennedy." The site skillfully packages new material with hundreds of archival documents, photo and video culled from Ted's long life in the spotlight.

Each element of the site integrated with Bonzai, Boston.com's large-scale content management system.

Innovative article presentation

When the reporters and videographers finished writing the series and editing the videos, they found themselves left with boxes of valuable primary source material: Actual letters between Ted and his mother, video of him eulogizing brother Bobby, and never-before-seen photographs from Chappaquiddick, to name a few. Already available in video playlists and teased throughout the site, we realized the article pages could be made more compelling if these mo- ments were inserted right into context with the stories. Reading about Ted's rousing speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention? Look to the right and you can play the video and watch for yourself. Riveted by a passage detailing JFK's assassination? Just slide your eyes to see the front page of The Boston Globe from the day he died; click to make it bigger.

Sprinkling these media elements into long stories -- each was about 7,000 words -- helped make each chapter feel less daunting, more like reading a magazine story. The reader gets an overview of the story simply by browsing the pull quotes, mini-slideshows and captions in the right rail. This presenta- tion put the story, the most-viewed single piece of content each day, at the center of the universe with all the day's relevant material orbiting around it.

Animated video bumper

We designed a motion graphics sequence to begin and brand each video in the series.

Chapter front pages

The index pages spotlight the most important pieces of content. Original documentary videos explore deeper into each chapter of Ted's life. These videos are embedded directly into the page to act as a visual hook. We showcase the book's strong writing and invite readers into the story with the first few paragraphs of each chapter set in oversize text. Supplementary materials unique to each chapter are teased in the footer.

Kennedy's Obituary

When Ted died, we extended the motif to his obituary pages, which helped establish continuity as the audience jumped between segments of his life and story.