Music Mobile App & Admin Dashboard
UI/UX Design for Jubal
- Jubal
- Creative Talent Marketplace
- Mobile App & Admin Dashboard Design
- 1 UX Researcher & UI Designer
- 1-2 Months
About Jubal
Jubal is a smart digital marketplace for creatives. It connects musicians, sound designers, and other creative professionals with clients from around the world. Their goal was to build a home for talent. A platform that understood the unique needs of artists. A platform that would simplify artist discovery. One that would let them build trust with clients instantly. But before this project, Jubal was just an amazing idea. They needed a digital platform as creative and professional as the users it was meant to serve.
Goal of the Design
Jubal asked us to design their entire platform from scratch. We had to build a modern marketplace for artists to showcase their work. The platform also had to help clients worldwide connect with the right creative talent. Our specific design objectives were to:
- Engineer Effortless Talent Discovery: The platform had to make finding the right artist and the right client simple. How do clients find exactly who they need? A bassist in Berlin? A sound designer in Nairobi? Generic filters wouldn’t cut it. This meant designing highly advanced search and filtering capabilities from the ground up.
- Design Compelling, Media-Rich Portfolios: A creative’s work is visual. It’s auditory. Clients seeking musicians need to hear. Animators looking for gigs need to show their work. The platform’s design had to allow users to showcase audio, video, and image files with ease. It had to have user profile designs that went beyond text.
- Create a Seamless Collaboration Experience: Exploring creative talent. First contact. Communication. Payments. The design had to make everything simple, clear, and transparent for both creatives and clients.
- Build a Trusted and Aspirational Community: The platform had to feel like a premium space. Every pixel had to serve the premium online creativity niche. The design had to have elements that signaled authority and trust.
Jubal was not just about slapping together an app. It was about crafting an ecosystem where artists and clients could connect effortlessly and build something extraordinary together.
Challenges
Building a new creative marketplace from zero presents a unique set of challenges. We had to solve for discovery, trust, & the specific needs of an artistic user base all at once.
The Discovery Problem in a Crowded Market:
- How does a client find the perfect sound designer in a sea of freelancers? The challenge was to design a discovery experience that was more intelligent than a simple keyword search. It needed to be more curated than a massive, open platform.
The Flat Portfolio Dilemma:
- Most freelance platforms treat creatives like any other job-seeker. A text-based resume doesn’t capture a musician’s sound. It can’t present a designer’s aesthetic. A text-heavy design approach would kill the platform’s ability to engage. The challenge was to build a new talent profile system that could truly showcase creative work in its native format.
The Initial Trust Gap:
- In any new marketplace, both clients and creatives are hesitant. Is this platform reliable? Are the artists vetted? Is my payment secure? The challenge was to design an interface that builds immediate trust.
Talent fears scams. The design had to build credibility fast. We aimed to do so through transparency and signals of quality. We dove in with a human-centered approach. We put the needs of artists and clients at the heart of every decision.
Our Approach
Discover: Strategy and Information Architecture
Our process began by architecting a dual-user experience from the start. We designed distinct, tailored profile views for both individual artists, like “Johnny Bravo,” and creative studios, like “VibeNest Studios.” We also created
- Smart Filters: Went beyond generic filters like “musician” or “designer.” Added niche tags like “EDM Producer” or “Character Animator.” Clients can have these filters to combine niche skills and location, and budget to find talent instantly.
- Visual Results Grid: We did not create text-heavy lists. We created clean cards that presented key info at a glance: skills, rate, location, etc.
- Saved Searches: We let clients save previous searches. This design feature turned complex queries into one-tap actions
The platform’s navigation was built into a persistent sidebar. It offered clear, one-click access to core hubs like “Gigs,” “Booking,” and “Financial Analytics.”
Define: Building a System of Trust and Quality
To solve the trust gap, we custom-designed a “Supa Pro” badge system. This simple, gamified element highlights vetted, top-tier talent. It gives clients a clear signal of quality. It also creates an aspirational goal for artists on the platform. We also designed a unique, custom feature called the “Sparks Manager.” This feature provides users with a dedicated space to manage creative ideas, potential leads, or project briefs.
Design Highlights
We developed a sophisticated visual system to make the portfolio the hero of the design. We used a dark-themed navigation and sidebar, contrasted with a clean white content area.
This made the artist’s images and videos pop. To make the artists’ work pop out even more, we ensured:
- Samples auto-play on hover
- Hourly rates are always visible
- Project budgets are always clear
- Left-side menu always stays fixed – key features like “Messages,” “Bookings,” “Financials” are always one tap away
We used typography with purpose: Poppins headers (bold and artistic) with interbody text (readable at small screen sizes).
Use of vibrant green (#4CAF50) and deep navy blue (#0A1929) accent colors intuitively signalled project statuses like “Active” or “Completed.” The entire interface was designed to feel sleek and visually focused. We avoided making the designs look cluttered or generic by not doing what the client’s competitors, like Upwork or Fiverr, did.
The new Jubal design is a sleek, intuitive blueprint for an artist-led platform with dark mode, standout portfolios, and smart filters. Design outcomes include:
- A Superior Showcase for Creative Talent:The rich, media-first portfolio design allows musicians and other artists to present their work authentically. It gives them the tools to stand out in a way that text-based platforms simply cannot.
- A Foundation for a Trusted Community: “Supa Pro” badges. Transparent project dashboards. Clear communication tools. These features are fostering trust among artists and clients from their very first interactions.
- Competitive Edge: The sleek, niche-focused design positions Jubal to compete effectively against larger platforms. It offers a more curated and aesthetically pleasing talent searching experience. The brand now has a clear advantage in attracting top-tier creative talent.
Final Product Showcase
Jubal’s platform now hosts thousands of creatives. Engagement is stronger than ever. Our design is serving as an active guide for their engineering team.
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