✦ Concept project — self-initiated
UI Redesign Brand Refresh Concept

Seek NZ — a job platform
that finally looks like 2025.

Seek is New Zealand's most-used job platform. Its design hasn't kept pace with the trust it's earned. This is a self-initiated concept redesign exploring what Seek could look like if it was built today.

Type
Concept / Self-initiated
Timeline
2025 · 3 weeks
Scope
Web + Mobile
Focus
UI & Visual Design
View live prototype
seek.co.nz
seek.
Find jobs
Companies
Career advice
Sign in
Post a job
Find your next role.
Thousands of jobs across New Zealand.
Job title, keyword, or company
Auckland, NZ
Search
AN
Product Designer
Anthropic NZ · Auckland · Full-time
New
2h ago
XR
UX Designer
Xero · Wellington · Hybrid
1d ago

A platform that earns
its users' trust visually.

Seek is the dominant job platform in New Zealand — but its visual design communicates institutional, not modern. Job searching is already an emotionally charged experience. The platform's aesthetic adds friction, not confidence.

The brief I set myself: redesign the Seek web experience with a visual language that feels contemporary, trustworthy, and human — without breaking the fundamental information architecture that users already know.

Constraint: Preserve what works. Seek's search and filtering mechanics are solid. This is a UI and visual design project, not a UX overhaul.

Before vs after —
a direct comparison.

Current Seek
Low-contrast text hierarchy
Dense, unbreathable layout
Dated orange brand colour
No dark mode support
Generic form components
Concept redesign
Strong typographic hierarchy
Generous whitespace and breathing room
Electric blue accent — modern, trustworthy
Dark mode as primary experience
Premium search and card components

Why dark — and why this blue?

The decision to go dark-first was deliberate. Job searching often happens at night, after work, under stress. A dark interface reduces eye fatigue and creates a more focused, less clinical environment — closer to a trusted tool than a government form.

The existing orange brand colour carries retail associations — it feels like a sale banner, not a career decision. The new electric blue signals technology, clarity, and forward momentum. It's a common blue, but used sparingly against black it reads as premium, not corporate.

Typography was upgraded from a generic sans to a tighter, higher-contrast scale. Headings got heavier. Body copy got lighter. The weight contrast alone improves the visual hierarchy more than any colour change.

Colour
Blue replaces orange
Orange was removed entirely. Blue signals clarity and trust — appropriate for a career platform. Used as a single accent against near-black, it reads as premium without being cold.
Space
Breathing room as signal
Generous padding and whitespace aren't decoration — they're a signal that the platform respects your time and attention. The redesign increases line height, card padding, and section spacing throughout.
Cards
Job cards that communicate more
The redesigned job card shows company logo, role, location, type, and recency at a glance — without requiring the user to scan across a cluttered row. Company logos give each listing a human face.
Search
Search as the hero moment
The search bar was enlarged and given visual prominence. It's the primary action on every page state. The redesign treats search as an entry point, not a utility widget buried in the header.

"Job searching is already stressful. The platform you use shouldn't add to it."

— Design rationale, self-initiated brief

Audit, concept, iterate —
three weeks of focused work.

01

UI audit of the existing platform

Documented every major UI pattern in the current Seek web experience — navigation, search, job cards, filters, job detail pages. Identified the 12 highest-impact UI problems to address.

02

Competitive analysis

Audited LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, and Glassdoor for contemporary UI patterns. Also looked outside the category at Vercel, Linear, and Raycast for inspiration on dark-mode-first design done well.

03

Colour and typography direction

Explored three colour directions before committing to the dark + blue approach. The warm-neutral and light alternatives both felt too similar to the existing brand. Dark was the only direction that felt genuinely different and better.

04

High-fidelity design in Figma

Produced high-fidelity designs for 6 key screens: home/search, search results, job detail, company page, profile, and mobile home. Built a light component library to maintain consistency across all screens.

What the redesign
actually looks like.

The redesign covers the full search experience: home, results page, job detail, and mobile. Each screen was designed mobile-first, then expanded to desktop.

Add your Figma screens here
Replace with <img src="seek-screens.png">

Recommended: Search results, Job detail page, Mobile view

What this project
taught me.

View live prototype
That's the work

Ready to talk about
what we could build together?

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