MyEntertainmentWorld.ca

Services provided: Design — Development — Implementation

Functionality

My Entertainment World began in 2006 with a single branch — My TV — hosted on Blogspot. By the end of 2011, it featured over a dozen staff writers, with new content going up daily at six branches — Theatre, Cinema, Books, Music and Sports in addition to TV — and was about to launch a seventh, My Games. Readership was divided and search listings diluted among the various Blogspot accounts, there was no easy way to include writer bylines, the default URLs were messy and navigating the sites was becoming increasingly difficult.

Solution

I integrated the seven separate branches into a single WordPress site, and organised them using categories. The main page highlights recent articles from all branches, alongside the site's notable exclusive interview series. Beyond that, each branch has distinct sidebar content including polls, social media widgets and advertising through Project Wonderful. Visitors to the site can view articles by branch, author or more specific tags. The growing staff is given due credit on a dedicated page and with detailed bylines on each article. Most importantly, all visitor traffic is consolidated onto a single domain, encouraging migration between the different branches while unifying them all within a single framework.

Design

The customisation options at Blogspot were limited, with little control over ads or layout; aside from the black, purple and red colour palette almost everything needed an upgrade to a cleaner, clutter-free look. Because a visitor's primary goal on the site is to read articles, the redesign had to ensure that would be as pleasant an experience as possible.

Solution

I mostly kept the existing colour palette, but improved the contrast and layout of the text to increase legibility. I also created seven hand-drawn, vectorised icons that, when paired with seven easily distinguishable colours, clearly indicate which branch any given article belongs to, and maintain some of the individual identity of each branch within the larger site. At the same time, the icons work well together visually, as they combine to represent My Entertainment World as a whole.

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