Stop Smiling Media began at the turn of this century as a fanzine for Chicago hipsters. By mid-decade, Stop Smiling Magazine emerged as a legitimate arts and culture magazine with national distribution and international following. In 2009, Stop Smiling transitioned into book publishing, drawing upon the same contributors and themes for its book titles as those explored in the magazine, for its book titles. Through it all, they needed a smart strategy online and offline.
Challenge.
In 2003, we were asked to design and develop the first online presence for the magazine. The magazine website was intended as a daily digest for readers, with articles, events, and oddities from around the web. The printed magazine was designed by award-winning art director Tracy Boychuck, and the website needed to exhibit the same design sensibilities. In 2009, the editors returned to FreshForm with a new objective—reincarnate the website as a book publishing venture.
Solution.
For the magazine website, we borrowed key typographic and color elements from early issues. Each printed magazine would contain a unique accent color and up to three collector covers. We embraced the accent color throughout the website and created an easy-to-use custom content management system for updating issues, articles, photo essays, advertising, and other features. Music was always an integral component, so we developed a Wordpress blog for publishing exclusive soundtracks and mix tapes.
When it was time for Stop Smiling Books, we performed the same research process and looked closely at the typography of the printed material to define the style of the website. We also created book blogs for Stop Smiling Book authors, giving them an online personality and connection to their readers.
Result.
Stop Smiling has now evolved to a new form. Stop Smiling Books is an independently owned, Chicago-based imprint in partnership with Melville House Publishing in Brooklyn. Creating the digital media kit, devising new forms of online advertising, and paying specific attention to detailed design allowed FreshForm to continue the partnership.
“Picking up the phone or exchanging emails about developing a site isn't just a routine, itemized conversation about where to insert links or position text boxes, but rather a chance to exchange ideas and restructure a site from the ground up. There is always an emphasize on how a site flows, how people will encounter it, how to make it better.”
—James Hughes, Publisher, Stop Smiling Books
Screen Shots
Services.
Digital Strategy, Interactive Design, Online Marketing, Organic SEO, Web Development
Technologies.
xHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, Actionscript 3.0, XML, PHP, MySQL