Summary: Website Style Guide (Tahareh Mafi)
I am looking at three websites for reference. Two of them are the official websites for writers Tahereh Mafi and Mieko Kawakami. The last one is a youth literary magazine that a friend used to submit work for when I was in high school called Evenscence Magazine. For the sake of this assignment, I will be applying the website style guide to Tamareh Mafi's site because it is both visually playful like Evanescent Magazine's yet conveys the same content as Mieko Kawakami's.
- Mafi's site intends to provide an introduction to the author and her work for both readers and contact inquiry.
- The website's voice is inviting and informational. A lot of the buttons are stylized to look like books or paper banners. The site has the feel of a contemporary young adult novel cover in terms of art style and design, which is indicative of Mafi's usual readers.
- The site is very colorful and image-heavy, yet the text is informational and blunt. There isn't much 'writerly detail.'
- As previously mentioned, this is an author of contemporary young adult fiction, so it plays a lot with the artstyles and troupes associated with contemporary novels. That's floral imagery, bright colors, having book imagery just to hit everyone over the head with the fact that its for readers. Like walking through a young adult romance or fiction section at Barnes and Noble.
- Possible "Personas":
- New Reader
- Teacher
- Returning Reader
- NEW READER:
This is the category I fall into actually. I've only read one of Mafi's works, which was why I went to her website to see if I'd heard of her other works. I personally have not read very much of the contemporary fiction genre, but I have heard of her Shatter Me series.I first opened her about page where it was a pretty similar rendition to the author's bio in the book of her's I read, but the web version was updated with her more recent works. Since I have names of works now, I can look through the rest of her bibliography and see if I like anything. The book pages have links to buy the books and the descriptions of them. Therefore, I am incentivized to come back to the site if I did want to purchase one.
TEACHER:
A high school English teacher is looking for comntemporary fiction that her students would be interested in for the next year. The year previous she had her students fill out a survey regarding what authors they've been reading recently. How interesting it is that the site somewhat resembles the deocrations of the classroom! Since the reading is for a class, the teacher must be careful about content since it must be approved by the school first. Luckily, there are book descriptions when you click on the book icons. The books are also categorized by reading level, middle school and young adult. Since this teache rteaches seniors, young adult novels should be the norm for them. She will definitely be adding either A Very Large Expanse of the Sea or An Emotion of Great Delight to her reading list so that she can gauge if it is appropriate for or worth adding to the syllabus, and may return to the site for purchase. There are reviews and praises alongside the book descriptions too, which is relieving to see as a teacher who doesn't want to bore or traumatize her students. Perhaps the first volume of Shatter Me would be good to add to the class library?
RETURNING READER:
After finally catching up with the Shatter Me series, a devoted reader of Tahereh Mafi's is looking for something else to read. He started reading the series due to some praise he saw on social media. He went onto the site at first to see if there was any news of the series' continuation, when he stumbled upon the other series by Mafi, The Woven Kingdom. He was standoffish at first, after seeing how girly the website was and realizing slowly that though Shatter Me is a dystopian fiction series, it also is quite female leading now that he thinks about it. It makes him wonder if the rest of the books on here are what everyone calls 'trashy tiktok romance novels,' but after reading a few descriptions, he finds himself a little curious. There were resonances of romance themes in the novels, yes, but each novel had so much more to play with. He found himself specifically interested in A Very Large Expanse of the Sea because it is a love story that takes place just a bit after 9/11 from the perspective of a young Persian girl who wears a hijab. Even if it's girly and romantic, there's real commentary and experience there, He thinks that maybe he should give this, and maybe even more love stories that aren't just 'romance' a chance. He puts in an order for A Very Large Expanse of the Sea and also checks regularly for updates on the Shatter Me universe. - Wireframe:
- COPY DECK:
Title and Homepage Anchor: Tahereh Mafi
Heading: Tahereh Mafi
Body Copy: Tahareh Mafi is the #1 New York Times bestselling, #1 international best selling, and national Book Award nominated author of over a dozen novels. The second instalment in her new fanatsy series, These Infinite Threads, is on shelves now.
Subheading and page link: ABOUT
Subheading 2: The Books
Sub Copy Links:
YOUNG ADULT
MIDDLE GRADE
VIEW ALL BOOKS
Subheading 3 and page link: The News
Subheading 4 and page link: Appearances
Subheading 5 and page link: CONTACT
Repeat Title no link: Tahereh Mafi
Sub heading 6 and link: Top of Page
Subheading 7: Site by Racket - Luckily, I did look at other writer websites like Kawakami's. Mafi's is definitely the most interesting to look at design-wise. It is easy to figure out, informational, but isn't too bland or stark like Kawakami's cool-yet-minimalist aesthetic. I reiterate that even though it has visual flourish, it remains straightforward unlike Margaret Atwood's website which has very small text links and is harder to navigate.