And we’re stay! As you may see, Colossal appears to be like fairly a bit completely different as we speak as we launch a brand new id and web site. That is by some means our fifth iteration of Colossal in 14 years, and we’re so excited to lastly share it with you.
It has not been simple. Tears have been shed. Hair pulled. Colour palettes blended. Fonts adjusted. Pictures re-cropped. Servers moved. Shameful portions of pizza consumed.
Colossal was based in 2010, a time when artists religiously up to date their portfolios on their private web sites, and discovering their work meant studying an artwork journal or visiting a gallery. This was earlier than most of us carried the web in our pockets and earlier than social media ballooned into the dominant however fractured pressure it’s as we speak. Running a blog was even declared “dead.”
However Colossal thrived. It grew together with platforms like Fb, Twitter, and Tumblr and was featured in one of many first Apple iPad commercials. Quickly, readers have been crashing our server repeatedly when publish after publish went viral. In these early days, this translated to promoting income and allowed us to develop from a employees of 1 to 2 and three and so forth. After all, Colossal at all times remained free.
What initially began as a weblog ultimately grew to become the web journal it’s as we speak with common contributors and hundreds of thousands of readers. In 2019, we launched a membership program to help our work, fund salaries, and hold the lights on. For us and most impartial magazines publishing on the web, viral visitors and strong promoting are not a assure.
That is all to say that the web and publishing ecosystem of Colossal’s inception will not be the identical as as we speak. Our earlier web site launched in 2017, and though it’s served us nicely for the final seven years, we have been due for a serious replace.
Final October, we reached out to Firebelly, an unimaginable design studio right here in Chicago. We’ve labored with their crew for the previous few months to refine what Colossal is and form our new id—you’ll hear extra from them concerning the course of within the coming weeks—and due to the diligent work of our developer Jordon Rupp and illustrator Natalie Shilo, we’re lastly able to share it with you.
So, what’s new?
Bookmarking
The flexibility to save lots of an article has lengthy been our—and your!—wishlist. To make use of this characteristic, merely click on on the Bookmark button underneath the headline or on a picture so as to add it to your dashboard. Bookmarking is unique to Colossal Members, so that you’ll have to log in to take full benefit of it.
Academics continuously cite Colossal as a helpful classroom useful resource from Okay-12 to school settings, and training is one in every of our core values. To make artwork extra accessible, we’ve added a glossary to assist clarify and supply examples of among the commonest phrases and strategies. We even included quick biographies of artists everybody ought to know. The glossary is designed for college students and lifelong learners alike.
We’ve additionally added a brand new search choice known as Discover that permits you to learn the location extra visually. We’ve mounted greater than 3,000 damaged hyperlinks, manually reformatted hundreds of articles, and deleted roughly 500 posts that not stay as much as our editorial requirements. The archive is absolutely value exploring now. Dive in.
As you navigate the web site over the subsequent few weeks, please attain out and tell us for those who expertise something exceptionally wonky or have suggestions basically. And as at all times, thanks for studying.
