And we're dwell! As you may see, Colossal appears fairly totally different at the moment as we launch a brand new id and web site. That is in some way the fifth model of Colossal in 14 years and we’re so excited to lastly share it with you.
It wasn't simple. Tears have been shed. Hair pulled out. Blended shade palettes. Adjusted fonts. Photos cropped once more. The servers have moved. Shameful quantities 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 grew to become the dominant however fractured pressure it’s at the moment. Running a blog has even been declared “lifeless”.
However Colossal thrived. It grew 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 as submit after submit went viral. In these early days, this translated into promoting income and allowed us to develop from a employees of 1 to 2 and three and so forth. In fact, Colossal at all times remained free.
What initially began as a weblog ultimately grew to become the web journal it’s at the moment, with common contributors and thousands and thousands of readers. In 2019, we launched a subscription program to help our work, fund salaries and maintain the lights on. For us and most unbiased magazines that publish on the Web, viral visitors and strong promoting are now not a assure.
All of which means that the web and publishing ecosystem from Colossal's early days isn’t the identical as it’s at the moment. Our earlier web site was launched in 2017 and though it has served us properly for the previous seven years, we would have liked to do a serious replace.
Final October I contacted Firebelly, an unbelievable design studio right here in Chicago. We've been working with their crew over the previous few months to refine what Colossal is and form our new id—you'll be listening to 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?
Marking
The flexibility to save lots of an merchandise has been on our wishlist and yours for a very long time! To make use of this characteristic, click on the Bookmark button beneath the title or a picture so as to add it to your dashboard. Marking is unique to Colossal members, so that you'll must log in to take full benefit of it.
Glossary of artwork
Academics regularly cite Colossal as a helpful useful resource within the classroom, from Okay-12 to universities, and training is one among our core values. To make the artwork extra accessible, we've added a glossary to elucidate and supply examples of a few of the extra widespread phrases and strategies. We've even included brief bios of artists everybody ought to know. The glossary is designed for each college students and lifelong learners.
Visible Search: Discover
We additionally added a brand new search choice referred to as Discover, which lets you learn the positioning extra visually. We fastened over three,000 damaged hyperlinks, manually reformatted hundreds of articles, and deleted about 500 posts that now not met our editorial requirements. The archive is absolutely price exploring now. Dive in.
As you browse the positioning over the following few weeks, please contact us and tell us when you have something exceptionally disagreeable or when you have any suggestions typically. And as at all times, thanks for studying.