Work

On the Grid

Co-creating the ultimate guide to global creative neighborhoods with designers around the world.

Brand Strategy, Visual Identity, Campaign Website, Product

Neighborhood guides by creatives for creatives

Yelp is anarchy. Searching for “hipster neighborhoods” on Google feels gross. There needs to be a better way to find the best places a city has to offer to discerning design geeks who love exploring new places.

What if there was always a friend with great taste you could always count on for recommendations to the best local spots? Say hello to On the Grid, a collection of neighborhood guides for cities around the world curated by local creatives just like you!

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An homage to cities and and their resident designers

The name On the Grid celebrates the urban street grid, with a nod to the tool most used by graphic designers: the alignment grid.

Gowanus Map
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OTG Brooklyn
It all started in Brooklyn

We love Gowanus. The neighborhood that plays host to Hyperakt HQ is full of great restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and creative spaces. To celebrate Gowanus, we built a simple, user-friendly neighborhood guide that captures the true essence of the places we love—through beautiful photography, candid descriptions, and design-driven curation.

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Start small, think big

What started as a single neighborhood guide in Brooklyn grew into a collection of neighborhood guides for cities around the world, all curated by local creatives.

  • 534
    neighborhood guides
  • 114
    cities
  • 43
    countries
  • 11K
    places
  • 50K
    original photos
OTG Brooklyn
OTG London

Illustrating the world's landmarks

As On the Grid grew to dozens of cities, eventually reaching well over 100, our designers painstakingly researched and illustrated the quirkiest landmarks we could find to represent each one. The collection includes classics like the Brooklyn Bridge and Eiffel Tower, but it also celebrates many modern buildings, sculptures, and more. We printed a limited edition set of silkscreened posters to commemorate our first 100 cities "On the Grid".

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Creativity lives everywhere

Every neighborhood is its own world, and On the Grid treats all neighborhoods with thriving creative scenes equally. Each local guide is carefully crafted from scratch by our local Curator and filled with exceptional recommendations so travelers can experience any city like a local. Whether you prefer boutiques or mom & pop shops, cocktail bars or dive bars, fine cuisine or crab shacks, galleries or street art, we've got you covered.

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Inspiring, relatable, useful, and trust-worthy

The magic at the heart of On the Grid is its original photography. Our Curators around the world—all busy creative professionals—not only choose their favorite neighborhood spots, they hit the streets to capture a photo essay of each location. The result is a lush, intimate view of each location as experienced through the eyes of a designer.

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With a little help from our friends

Created and managed by Hyperakt, On the Grid is the collaborative effort of hundreds of the world’s most talented design companies and independent creatives. Each OTG Contributor serves as a neighborhood Curator by selecting, photographing and writing about their favorite neighborhood spots.

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Love and praise from the internet

On the Grid has received glowing press and has built a cult following among the creative community. Ask a designer if they know OTG and odds are they’ll say yes.

  • 1.5M
    Visitors
  • 12M
    Pageviews
  • 3:15
    Average session duration
This is one of those terrific, wish-I’d- thought-of-that ideas that you can’t help but be charmed by...
Khoi Vihn
Subtraction.com
OTG Social
It’s hard to get good advice when you’re visiting a new city. Yelp is anarchy... Most travel apps are horribly designed. So these neighborhood guides are an especially welcome resource.
Gizmodo

On the Grid swag

In order to support our hundreds of Curators working on content in different countries, we printed business cards and flyers they could present at places they wanted in different languages. With the generous support of sponsors like Moo and Scoutbooks, we were able to ship official On the Grid starter kits all over the world.

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Social Innovation Week NYC

On the Grid was invited to create a sculptural representation of all the neighborhoods published on the site up to that point for WeTheSocial's exhibition in NYC's Nolita neighborhood. Each neighborhood was represented by a 6" x 6" cube with photos and text on all sides.

From earlier
9 E27 FEF4 67 CA 4 F8 D A90 E 61 C992 E87 E67
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Project Credits

Project Team
  • Deroy Peraza
  • Eric Fensterheim
  • Marianna Fierro
  • Alex Gracey
  • Dylan Viola
  • Eric Wang
  • Wen Ping Huang
  • Logan Emser
  • Nick Di Chiara
  • Jeanne Henry
  • Andres Kishimoto
  • Nick Beattie
  • Misa Rodriguez
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