Re-Imagining a 92-Year-Old Institution for a Post-Print Mobile-First World

LAUNCHED MAY 2015
Designed while working at 10 Speed Labs

UNPRECEDENTED GROWTH

Reversed slowing subscription growth with strict paywall rules designed to gently stage users into subscriptions.

FORM IS FUNCTION

Over 20 module-based templates tailored to the strengths of different story and content types.

RESULTS-FOCUSED

Created new growth products while dramatically cutting costs and expanding existing revenue streams.

BUILT TO LAST

Responsive imagery-driven reading experience looks and reads beautifully on any device.

We revolutionized the research experience for 92 years of archives with a visual and interactive timeline-based search — a functional first — augmented by cutting-edge auto-tagged filtering for regions, people, topics, authors, media type, and even raw text.

To get Foreign Affairs' attention during the RFP process, I knew we would have to hustle harder than the big name competing agencies. Over the weekend we brainstormed and wireframed over 40 pages of original features and ideas, creating a presentation to distinguish us from the more cautious competition. Most of the features designed in our RFP proposal remained intact in final site designs. This was all without having met the client, nor being paid for our voluntary spec work. It was a huge risk, but we won the RFP.

NEW REVENUE STREAM:
We created the FOREIGN AFFAIRS ANTHOLOGY SERIES as a way of collecting the definitive Foreign Affairs articles on specific topics, from Terrorism to the Ukraine. Free to subscribers and $9.99-$19.99 for non-subscribers, we expect this feature to be a big success.

The existing website was the familiar dusty and stale grid of slowly changing images, lacking the gravitas of the brand's rich and important history, and failing to convey the quality of its own content.

QUESTIONING
THE STATUS QUO

Almost every major publications' website is some version of a grid of small images and headlines, all screaming for your attention. Because Foreign Affairs only published 1-2 articles per day, we knew this sort of design had the horrible and unavoidable downside of causing the homepage to be stagnant and unchanging day-to-day (50% of Foreign Affairs' audience visit the website 2-3 times daily).

This had proven to cause inordinately high bounce rates on their current site, given the quality of new content. The magazine was selling itself short by trying to play by the rules of their competitors. This proved unnecessary, given the unique nature of Foreign Affairs' contentand audience.

We designed the article page to have a variety of content elements and styles (over 12 unique templates including listicles and sponsored content), from image-heavy full-screen pull quotes to embeddable galleries and twitter feeds, all easy to drop into any article. We intentionally kept the article "well" extremely bare, and established stringent ad placement guidelines to limit the number of elements on a page at once.

We increased the font size to accommodate older readers, and carefully aligned every detail of our designs to the brand's gorgeous and historically significant print reading experience, from the typefaces and leading to the use of rules and space to provide a calm and focused minimalist reading experience.

Articles end with either a related content timeline or a full-screen image and headline recommending a single article.

Even a navigation bar is an opportunity to elegantly reinforce a brand, and provide meaningful engagement with the most common interaction element in the website.

We designed paywalls to gently and simply convert users into registered and then paid subscribers, hassle-free.

Even a simple in-paywall subscription form was streamlined beautifully into a simple and quick free trial.

And of course, the entire website is responsive with zero feature degradation, from the timeline to highlighting tools.

The following is a testimonial of Foreign Affairs' experience working with my team, from Editor-in-Chief, Gideon Rose.

“We chose 10 Speed over several other firms for the job because we were so impressed with their proposal and pitch, and never regretted the choice for a minute. Working closely with us for months on end, they translated our vague ideas and needs into beautiful, practical designs that we couldn't be happier with.

The designs themselves were simply gorgeous and the ideas amazingly creative, but the 10 Speed gang was eminently hard-headed as well, working carefully with us to produce not just pretty pictures but to meet all of our business, revenue, and brand marketing goals.

They worked collaboratively with us as a true team, converting complicated situations into elegant solutions and never giving less than 100% effort. I recommend them unreservedly, and would be happy to expound on our experiences in detail as desired.”

— Gideon Rose
Editor-in-Chief, Foreign Affairs

Here is a gallery of additional designs from the website: