Griffin Poetry Prize - Adam Zinzan

Coding poetry for international literary institution,
Griffin Poetry Prize

CONTEXT: Founded by philanthropist Scott Griffin and acclaimed author Margaret Atwood, Griffin Poetry Prize is an internationally renowned literary institution that celebrates excellence in poetry.

ART DIRECTION UX/UI BRANDING
GRIFFINPOETRYPRIZE.COM

OPPORTUNITY: The client approached me to refine their brand and overhaul their web presence to create spare yet feature-rich web property to serve as their new online home. In addition to representing The Griffin Prize online, the project posed several unique challenges. As the formatting of poetry is often integral to the poem itself, ensuring the flexibility to accommodate these various idiosyncrasies and respect their display across all devices was of particular concern. Like many event-based institutions, the Prize also needed to act quickly to shift its programming online to more reliably serve its audience.

As a well-respected literary authority, ensuring the typographic design would meet with the approval of even the most discerning editorial eye was essential. I worked closely with the in-house team at the Prize to develop new brand standards, streamline the information architecture of their content, and deliver a design that better served the various functions of the Prize. This included live-streaming of events, robust community tools like the International Poetry Calendar, poet biographies, as well as an extensive library of poetry content in a browsable online experience.

The site is highly automated in that all content is universally updated when one instance of a data point is added or edited. Upload a new poetry reading to the database and it's automatically featured on the poet's bio page; modify a poet's bio photo and the change is reflected across the site – as it should be. The enterprise-level database approach simplifies content updates and keeps the property looking its best. The result is a tailored, high-performance web presence for the Prize that will serve them for years to come ■