Editorial Design: Climax Magazine for Generation Z
Ironhack Week#5 | Group Project | 4 Days
The fifths week of Ironhack’s UI/UX Bootcamp has just past. And as it’s Sunday, here is another short review of the challenge I had to face this week, this time teaming up with wonderful Andreea N.
This week’s task was to design a responsive online platform for a magazine directed to meet the needs and goals of one of the presented User Personas. We have chosen to work with the youngest user persona Paula: The Laid-Back Creative.
User Research
As you can see in the persona profile above, Paula is 19 years old and therefore belongs to Generation Z, which is the new generation. Research shows us that the new generation takes self-expression very seriously. In addition, Gen Zers are radically inclusive as part of being digital natives, they don’t distinguish between friends they meet online and friends in the physical world. They continually flow between communities that promote their causes by exploiting the high level of mobilization technology makes possible.
We found this statement of a female respondent very expressive as it embodies the voice of the new generation.
“We each have our own style and way of being, but what binds us is that we accept and understand everyone’s styles.”
While millennials (pretty much our generation) consumed experiences. For Generation Z on the other hand, consumption is the search for truth, in both a personal and a communal form. The search for the truth is at the root of all Generation Z’s behavior. For this reason, the new Z generation is also referred to as the “True Gen”.
Market Positioning Map & Competitor Analysis
So where do we want to place ourselves? After extensive research on our competitors. We have decided that we wanted to place our magazine in the high feminine and niche corner. According to our market placement, our main competitors were Lithium Magazine and Crybaby Magazine, which were also founded by Generation Z representatives. So we moved forward and did a visual competitor analysis of our closest competitors.
Branding
Now that we have completed our research and had a clear vision of where we wanted to place ourselves in the market, it was time to think of our own branding and visual identity. We had to define our brand attributes first in order to be able to create a certain feeling that we want to transmit to our targeted users. The challenge was to personalize it in a way that delivers genuine value and relevance. We created this mood board as we were aiming for Brand attributes like:
Progressive — Urban — Feminine — Bold — Edgy — Outspoken — Smart
The next step was now to define the individual component details (like typography, font size, and button styles) we wanted to have in our brand. We decided to create a style tile first before we move forward doing our Hi-Fi prototype. As we wanted to create a common visual language before investing time and energy into creating hi-fidelity mockups.
Hi-Fi Prototype
Moving forward to our Hi-Fi prototypes. We have decided to split our online magazine into two sections:
- READ: This section contains all written content and articles, you can browse through and read.
- SEE: This section contains mainly visual content, imagery, and animations. It’s like an online art book that you can browse through for inspiration.
We’ve started prototyping the web version first, for this mockup we have decided to include an error page, showing a potential “unhappy path” which could occur. We have also managed to create a mobile mockup, where we (unfortunately) had to compromise some features to be able to ensure usability on mobile devices.
Learnings
This week's focus has been purely on UI and design aesthetics. I’m still amazed about the final prototype we have been able to deliver by the end of the week, as we have come a long way. Our main learnings were definitely, not to fall in love with ideas. Sometimes it’s just better to step back, reflect and don’t go too crazy. Also, testing is essential in the process, it has proven to be especially helpful when you’re stuck. Going from Lo-Fi to Hi-Fi was a challenging process and we made a lot of testing in between to make sure that we are delivering to our user's needs. Overall, I’m super happy with both of our prototypes and feel accomplished about this week’s project outcomes.