Overview
YNST Magazine is a print and (and now) digital publication start-up that highlights the rich and diverse, yet often over-looked art and culture of the Appalachia region. We designed and developed their website to help them expand their reach to a new, digital audience, manage subscriptions, and sell merchandise. Complete with a three-tiered advertising system, e-commerce marketplace, and artwork submission and vendor application integrations, ynstmagazine.com is designed to grow B2B and B2C revenue, in addition to expanding the publication’s brand visibility, reach, and recognition online.
Timeline: April 2023 – Present
Role: UI/UX Consultant
Client: YNST Media LLC
UI/UX + Managed Hosting
YNST Magazine’s website is built to share the publication’s articles and other media on a digital platform that enables them to reach are larger outside both within and outside of the Appalachian region. My team and I at Full Circle Design created the website’s information architecture and interface to coordinate with the publication’s brand guidelines, content structures, and visual aesthetic. Our mission was to deliver a user experience that seamlessly bridged the gap and provided a consistent brand experience between the publication’s print and digital media.
Tools:
Figma, Blender, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flywheel, WordPress, Visual Studio Code
Articles and Media
Creating a responsive, modular layout system for articles, galleries, and author profiles was a central part of my design strategy. This required close collaboration and coordination with my development team to create custom blocks that could be implemented throughout the site by the client’s team via a back-end user interface, giving them full control of creative content creation without the risk of breaking the site layout.
- Custom Gutenberg Editor Blocks
- Custom Hero Image Blocks
- Safe-Zone Graphic Templates
E-Commerce
YNST’s website includes an E-Commerce marketplace that allows their business to sell individual issues of the magazine, merchandise, and sell and manage annual subscriptions. I worked with both the YNST leadership team and my agency’s developers to design and implement the E-commerce design strategy which included custom templates that managed WooCommerce and Stripe integrations for payment processing.
- Seamless WooCommerce and Stripe Integrations
- Automated, Branded Order Confirmation Emails
- Taxes and Reporting Setup
Advertisement
My team and I designed and implemented a three-tier advertisement system for YNST’s website which allows their team to manage ads both site-wide or locally on individual pages. There is also an advertisement inquiry portal which we have integrated into their team’s Monday.com task management system.
- Three Tier Advertisement System
- Advertisement Inquiry Portal
- Task Manager Integrations
Content Strategy
Content strategy was based on industry research and analyzing YNST’s current publication release and how my team and I could create a sustainable UI/UX solution for sharing content and managing online sales in a way that delivers a consistent brand experience to their audience.
We also leveraged pre-existing mailing lists, and made recommendations for task management softwares that we integrated into their website to optimize their workflow.
Performance Optimization
I oversaw and contributed to the development of YNST’s website. This included adhering to W3C Standards and ADA Compliance. We also limited the use of unnecessary plugins to reduce loading time and the risk of security vulnerabilities that installing excessive plugins can pose.
Upon the initial launch, my design team and I optimized all images to assure quick content loading speeds.
Managed Hosting
YNST’s website is hosted on my agency, Full Circle Design’s website hosting server. All sites on our server receive daily backups, monthly analytics, and a maintenance request portal that notifies our team to repair of any issues experienced on the website.
Their website is is secured with Two-Factor Authentication and login attempt limits to block unauthorized access to their sensitive information.
3D + Motion
During the website project, YNST Magazine’s team asked me to create a 3D animation of their first issue to share on social media and eventually their website. This was created using Blender 3D modeling software and After Effects for post-production.
Tools
Blender, Adobe After Effects