Voicebowl is an online magazine, found on voicebowl.com and circulated largely my social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Voicebowl was a very large and complex project which spanned over a 6-month time-frame. Working closely with the three founding members, I felt much more like part of the Voicebowl management team than a contractor. I was closely involved in every step of planning, branding strategy, design, communication efforts, and monetization of the Voicebowl name with the Voicebowl team.
Logo
The Voicebowl logo is extremely symbolic. Not only do the three crescent-bands represent the three founding members, but it also represents sound waves – indicative of “voice” and is also shaped like a bowl.
The goal of this logo was to be unique, simple and memorable. The upward shaped crescents are also in a “smile” shape, which induces happiness. It also resembles an aerial view of a stage, or “bowl”. The informal Voicebowl logo presentation can be seen below. *Note – it was not intended to be seen by anyone but the Voicebowl team.
Photo shoots
The team and I knew that we would need some marketing materials to appear on the website and to be shared across social media. We would also need headshots to serve as avatars. We shot several on-location shoots, as well as an in-studio shoot, using high-speed strobes to black out the background which creates a very dramatic effect.
Website & Blog
The magazine was initially designed to support three main categories: Yoga & Wellness, Beauty & Trends, and Health and Medicine. Each category had its own section on the homepage of the site, as well as a collective list of the latest and archive posts. As the magazine’s readership, circulation and demand grew, it was necessary to expand the categories further to include: Food and Travel, Women’s Empowerment, and Art’s Corner.
The website is equipped to allow comments from users of many platforms, such as: Facebook, WordPress, Google and Outlook. Notifications are sent to the article author to moderate received comments. Articles on the website are able to be shared on all social media platforms by using the integrated share buttons on the article. Readers are also encouraged to follow Voicebowl on social media platforms as well as through an email subscription.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was deeply taken into consideration. Voicebowl was registered on major search engines such as Google, Firefox and Yahoo. Each page’s header code was carefully written to include all keywords that would draw webcrawlers and bots into the site.
Monetization & Analytics
Monetization is the motivation for business in general. Monetization of Voicebowl was established through ads and affiliates. Each Voicebowl author is able to receive reports of their site’s activity and income on a per-post (micro) or over long periods (macro) time-frame. The site is also equipped with Google Analytics as well as Facebook Analytics, so each author is able to track their own article’s success, readership and monetization which motivated them to be more active on social media to enable higher numbers.
