Seedbed Journal

Intro

When editor of Seedbed Journal, S.T. Antonio, came to me asking to transform the formerly print-only publication of Seedbed Journal into an online reading experience, I knew there would be some challenges. Because I wanted to honor the nearly 40 year history of the journal while also making it a relevant product for the digital age, I suggested the project should be broken up into two phases: 1) Brand Redesign and 2) Web Design/Development.

Phase 1: Brand Redesign

After several rounds of iterations, we landed on the following brand guidelines.

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Phase 2: Web Design / Development

Using the newly established design system, we began designing the site in Figma and developing it in Webflow. There were several requirements that made this project unique.

1. Gated Content

Due to the sensitive nature of the articles, the editor of the journal only wanted the content to be accessible to members. This means that unless the user is logged in, they are unable to access any of the articles and are prompted to either log in or create an account.

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To become a member, a user must request membership and be vetted by the editorial team. Since this build was done before Webflow rolled out their native memberships feature, I went with a third-party integration called Memberspace. Currently, the site has over 1,000 registered members!

2. Searchable, Filterable Content

In addition to offering PDF and eReader versions of articles, the website needed to present article content natively in the browser with additional features and interactivity such as anchored footnotes and a Bible reference plugin. Having the articles as rich text also improves the archive search experience.

I pushed Webflow's CMS capabilities to their limit with collections that reference each other extensively: Articles reference their respective authors, category types, and a whole host of other details. This allowed me to build a rich filtering system for their archive, which currently houses issues from 2005 to the present (older issues are still being digitized and uploaded).

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The Finished Product

Editor S. T. Antonio was ecstatic with the resulting website in its current form. There are plans to add additional features in the future.