An online magazine where you can customize content to get inspired & become the artist you always wanted.
Briefing. For this project the initial requirements were very specific:
To design a responsive online platform for a magazine, directed to meet the needs and goals of the following user persona:
Paula (19) — The Laid-Back Creative
- She reads Vice, Rolling Stone, Man Repeller and other webzines.
- She wants to be an artist and connect with people (and aliens if they want to) around the world.
- She reads voraciously, everywhere, anywhere. In bed, public transportation, with friends, out loud, for her projects, etc.
- Goals: be cool and achieve her dreams. Read the most influential authors from her time to show off on Instagram. Have her first expo soon to start being “someone” in the art scene.
Starting point: empathize with Paula, based on research
The key information we know about her was that she is very social, and on top of it she wants to connect with people, she wants to become “someone” in the art world and finally a renowned artist.
But what do we infer from this information?
- That to connect with people, means to share, and therefore Paula needs to find her own community of young artists that have her same goals and interests.
- That becoming someone is nowadays measured by “online popularity”, specially for Gen-Z users, and therefore in we are going to evaluate this criteria based on “followers”, we need to consider Intagram a key platform and research how artists promote themselves through there and what features are key.
- In order to become an artist, it’s really important to consume a certain type of culture, and that inevitably, this culture is perceived as more valuable when shared; meaning people seeing what we are listening to on Spotify, watching what exhibition we are visiting through stories, understanding what we like to read etc…
This three hypothesis, became key in order to design our digital product, but also during the research of online publications such as Yorokubu or even BOOOOM (platform to feature emerging artists work), to understand how they were:
1. Creating a sense of artistic community.
2. How the information architecture and content were displayed: was it more visual, was there more text, how dynamic was this content in order to meet Gen-z ways of consumption?
3. How could this platforms could help Paula to become an artist within them, and not implying an outside activity? (for this we also researched Behance, Medium, Dribble… and basically any popular site that implied creating an online shareable artist profile).
Ideation: the creators was born
So that’s when we found our value proposition: the creators Magazine, an online publication for emerging artists where they could:
1. Personalize content based on what they wanted and needed to consume: basically working as a source of inspiration for their work, and being able to highlight or consume more the type of articles and imagery that could help them towards their projects and own creations.
2. A magazine where Paula could immediately access a community and make some connection, based on common interests (which was one of her given goals).
3. A place where at the same time, the artist could create and promote their own profile and work, becoming one step closer to being that “someone” in the art world.
Moodboard & Style Tile
As you can imagine, the look and feel of “The Creators Magazine” was key, as we needed it to breathe a sort of hipster and cool look, but also bare in mind that it was going to host a lot of different art disciplines, and therefore dynamism had to be balanced with clarity.
Thats why we chose a neutral color palette with a white background, that intended to remind to that white artists canvas before starting a painting, or that blank page that is about to be filled with inspiration.
Font is a very standard, sans serif one, that breathes a contemporary trendy vibe, but at the same time is very easy to read (lets remember Paula likes to read a lot everywhere, so we are assuming she will be using a lot her phone in different public places to read the content).
We have also used big eye-catching headline styles, similar to other iconic publications such as Vice and Yorokubu, to help our user identify herself with a certain image that she recognizes.
Monetization
In every product and user experience design there is always a key component, that some designers tend to overlook: how are we going to monetize our product?
Initially marketing and arriving to agreements with artists to be part of our platform is key. They will be the main influencers for other to join.
To be able to personalize content, as well as to publish and create your artists profile, you need to subscribe. If not, you can consume the content, but it won’t be tailored for you.
With your subscription, there is 5 projects included. Any additional one you want to publish, its 1,99€ extra (or you can always delete an older one).
Finally, as a stable source of income, the creators will include ads.
Let’s now dive inside the MVP
Paula enters The Creators Magazine looking for inspiration for her projects and does not want to waste too much time browsing through all the categories and content, only the ones that interest her.
After an initial look-around, she sees the section “personalize your canvas”, and realizes she can choose, within the themes that the magazine already has, the ones that are going to help her more with her work.
In addition, she will be able to select some hashtags (let’s remember Paula’s age and online behaviour here), and to initially follow some profiles of the top creators of the magazine, and like that keep up to date with the latests art trends.
Once registered, Paula will be able to access her creator profile, where she can see her followers and views, where to connect her social media accounts such as Instagram or Spotify to gain more followers, as well as choose:
- If she is interested in collaborations
- Access her area to publish works
- Review again some of the publications she has saved
- As well as check the latest works of the profiles that she follow
- And possible announcements in the noticeboard for artist collaborations of freelance work
A different day, Paula attends an exhibition of an artist she met through The Creators, and on her way there she accesses the site through her phone. As she is a member, the site obviously has her saved preferences and settings saved content wise, and therefore she will only see art and music related articles, with the hashtags she prefers.
Like this, when she arrives to the exhibition, she will not only be aware of this artist’s work, but also of some interesting topics she is planning to use in order to network.
Next steps
For the growth of The Creators, and baring in mind this is only an MVP developed in a week and half, we considered the following next steps:
- Possibility os organizing creators events through the platform (almost like creative meet-ups)
- Giving anually Creators Awards to the best artists by categories of the platform, selected by the community of the magazine
- Development of an e-shop where members can sell their art
- Creation of an internal chat/message system, to be able to contact directly artists through the platform for work or collaborations and exchanges.
