Little Free Lit Mag

Little Free Lit Mag is a quarterly short form literary journal. Celebrating both digital and print reading experiences, we post web and pdf versions of each issue and encourage readers to share a copy with local free book boxes. Joining this project as their Web Designer was a no-brainer; I love both poetry and community spaces and enjoyed designing a welcoming and fun user experience!

Planning

Based on my experience in the world of poetry publication, collaboration with team members, and the vision for the journal, I mapped out ways our users would interact with the site. I focused on the following deliverables to visualize the user journey:

User Flows

Downloading an issue

Users can download a pdf of the issue using a button on the issue page.

Reading poems

Users have the option of reading poems out of order or following a thematic reading path.

Site Map

Wireframes

Home

Home

Issue

Issue

Poem

Poem

Archive

Archive

Editorial Team

Editorial Team

Building

I built the website using the WordPress Gutenberg block system because the magazine is entirely volunteer run. WP is open source and the block system makes it easy for future editorial staff to migrate and redesign the site. 

I hosted the site on Bluehost for a few reasons: our budget, Bluehost’s reliability and security features, and their intuitive interface for setting up WP sites.

Design for the site prioritized an accessible and clean reading experience. I kept the following baseline accessibility considerations in mind when making style choices:

  • I chose the open-source, sans-serif font Manrope for paragraphs and titles because it maintains good legibility even at small text sizes. Body text uses a baseline size of 16px. 

  • I went with the Riverbank theme as a jumping off point because the background and text colors provide good contrast while letting individual pieces have the spotlight.

  • Every picture on the site includes alt text to help SEO, and to provide context to users who have screen readers.

  • All of the published pieces include an audio and text version.

  • Each page’s headings are ordered semantically so users with screen readers can orient themselves with ease.

I also built reusable page patterns for other site admins to use and installed plug-ins to help with SEO, migration, and the compression and optimization of images. 

Finally, I used the Google Search Console to upload a site map and request page crawls so the site could be indexed as fast as possible.

In order to maintain the site, I add and archive content when new issues come out. I also update any plugins to maintain security, and I periodically run accessibility audits using WAVE and other browser tools.

Maintaining

Thanks!