@mały format

mały format

Student project of a digital magazine, whose number of readers in 2019 reached 3500 per month. My first experience of designing for real users. In 2017 I was in charge of creating the platform (front-end & back-end) for our new magazine. In addition, I did a lot of “UX job”, although I didn’t know at the time that it was a thing.

  • company mały format
  • website malyformat.com
  • role Front-end Developer & UX/UI Designer
  • date Jun 2019 — Oct 2019

challenge

We wanted to create a digital magazine that would be unique, a different experience of reading literary criticism. Our goal was for Mały Format to become a place for young writers and illustrators to share their work.

the story

It all started in winter 2017 when I got in touch with a group of literature students, who wanted to start a new digital magazine that would promote literary criticism and art.

I decided to create our magazine on Wordpress. It was my first encounter with this CMS, although I had been programming in PHP for a while. Regarding I wasn’t being paid, I wanted to learn as much as possible. That’s why I’ve chosen Wordpress.

I created my first own Wordpress template based on designs delivered by our graphic designer. The final layouts were results of a long-lasting process of validating our ideas and improving them. My decisions were based on my foregoing knowledge about UI patterns and best practices.

In addition to the front side of the platform, I was also responsible for customizing Wordpress backend for the editors. Non-tech editors. My goal was to create a form that would be easy to use and would allow to format texts according to the editors’ needs. Creating Mały Format was also an opportunity for me to learn Google Analytics and Hotjar. I could test both on the real audience and witness step by step how people interact with the platform.

Screens of Mały Format's pages and articles