The Challenge
Lea Anne wanted this book-matching platform to feel friendly and child-centric while also catering to principals, administrators, teachers, parents, and librarians. At first, Lea Anne wanted to build a simple website - but in our work together, we uncovered that her idea was actually bigger than what one single site could hold. To do Bookelicious justice, we needed to construct a brand new platform.
The SOlution
After sitting down with Lea Anne to discuss the Bookelicious vision and target audience research, we developed detailed and comprehensive brand guidelines as well as foundational assets like the Bookelicious logo, color palette, fonts, and overall aesthetic.
We found and brought on board Juan Manuel Bosi, a highly talented illustrator, and collaborated closely with both Juan and Lea Anne Borders to develop a unique bookmoji style. Fun fact: Diana also introduced Lea Anne to Laura Godfrey, a successful serial entrepreneur who is now co-founder and plays a major role in Bookelicious’ current growth.
Once the basic brand elements and bookmoji illustration style were established, we went on to design the entire Bookelicious platform. This was a massive product design undertaking as it included complex and interconnected elements that needed to resonate with users who differed greatly in age, interest, and tech savviness.
The design process included developing the site architecture, exploring and establishing multiple user flows, wireframes, high-fidelity mockups and interactive prototypes of a wide variety of complex components including:
- e-commerce
- webpages to organize and showcase the extensive Bookelicious library and collections
- a GUI for gamified book-matching
- interconnected dashboards for educators, parents and children
- virtual classrooms
- back-end dashboards for professional curators
- interfaces for virtual book fair fundraisers
As the platform went into development, design work on cohesive marketing materials, investor documents, presentations, print materials and other brand collateral began. To date, we’ve designed social media posts, emails, animated gifs, investor decks, executive summaries, look books, internal design processes, QR codes and extensive print materials.
The Result
Bookelicious is growing fast. The platform went live to the public in August of 2021 and currently has over 95,000 registered users, is used by more than 3,500 schools across the United States, is endorsed by many well-known voices in the children's literacy world, and has attracted $2.2 million in seed money.
I had all these pretty big ideas about what I wanted [Bookelicious] to become and maybe less of a grip on how much work it would take to get there... Diana, you contributed in so many ways. It's been such a long and great time working with you and I've loved it. Bookelicious would probably be a very different place if it weren't for you. You've had a huge impact on it.
I'm so happy with the work you've done. You're incredibly collaborative and I've loved working with you. You brought this bright, happy vibe to what we were doing.
