Literary Arts books with glasses

Literary Arts

Literary Arts invites some of the world’s most renowned writers to Portland while simultaneously celebrating and supporting our local literary community. Together, we created a platform that encourages readers and writers across generations to find their story.

Visit Literary Arts
Client: Literary Arts
Services: Website Design & Production
Working With Us Since: 2005

Table of Contents

To begin the project, we embarked on a discovery research project with Literary Arts and their constituents in order to understand their wants and empathize with their frustrations. This took the form of both in-person interviews and questionnaires.

As we poured through the feedback, it became clear that we needed to shift the website away from a focus on organizational structure and move to prioritizing constituents. This manifested in a completely redesigned website that evolved the conversation from a me to a we approach.

This insight led us to evolve the way that Literary Arts not only communicates through their website, but also to reimagined their conversations everywhere from print material to newsletters.

To do this, we utilized a variety of languages (graphics, words, colors, and structure) that ensure Literary Arts now speaks directly to readers and writers across generations.

Turning the Page

We discovered that 80% of website visitors were looking for events, which makes sense given that Literary Arts puts on the regions most well-known and loved Literary Events—Portland Book Festival, our city-wide Youth Poetry Slam, Portland Arts & Lectures, etc.—and yet finding them was a difficulty of epic proportions.

Not anymore! 

We took a proactive, events focused approach and created a platform that allows visitors to find event based on their interest and see the extent of excitement that is Literary Arts. 

Photo Forward

Finally, we wanted to focus on the diversity of people and programs at Literary Arts which lead to a vibrant, photo forward approach.