OA Journals Toolkit
Developing a new brand identity and multilingual website for OA Journals Toolkit
The Open Access Journals Toolkit is an online, multilingual resource providing articles and other information to support the development of scholarly journals of all sizes, disciplines and languages. It is a collaborative project between the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association, Directory of Open Access Journals, and Research Consulting.
The Toolkit represents the diversity of the global scholarly community, including publishers, editors, authors, technical providers, researchers, and librarians. It provides a breadth of resources needed to set up and launch an academic journal.
Studio Seventeen developed a new brand and style guide for the Toolkit, which allows all users, developers and designers involved in the project to create consistent, branded work. This ensured the brand stays visually consistent, strong and professional. The result is a clean, modern and professional brand identity that is rich in colour, shapes and abstract photography.
Typography needed to be compatible with an array of different languages, including those with non-latin characters. The colour palette includes shades of blues, greens and yellows, with the bookmark shape introduced as an anchor for elements. Layouts are based upon the angles and patterns generated from the dynamic shapes of the bookmark itself.
Logo
Drawn from the concept of a digital bookmark, the logo was designed to unite the themes of searching for, studying, and storing information with ease. Representing a digital library of information, users can connect with this mark of academia that is innovative, clean and responsive across different applications.
User Interface
The OA Journals Toolkit website needed to be easy to navigate and understand, including a search feature to easily filter content and to allow effective browsing of resources. We designed a fully accessible user interface for the toolkit, ensuring the user experience feels easy to use and is fully functional.
OA Journals Toolkit Website
The OA Journals Toolkit provides its users with the tools they need to set up, launch, and run an academic journal, according to globally-recognised standards and best practices. The website is multilingual, allowing users to choose to display the content in their native language.
All of the content is categorised into topics that cover all of the information needed in an easy-to-navigate manner, including the ability to download each article as a PDF.
A Multilingual Experience
One of the key requirements was that the entire Toolkit and resources would be multilingual. We added language switching functionality so that users can easily change the English content to the translated content. So far, French and Arabic translations have been developed, and more languages will be added as the project expands.
Website Accessibility
Accessibility was an important factor, and all of the website assets were designed to WCAG standards. The result is a modern platform that reflects the values and future objectives of The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.
Our experience of working with Studio Seventeen has been incredibly positive. Studio Seventeen helped us bring to life an informative and easy to navigate website, meeting the needs of a diverse range of users. Studio Seventeen communicated clearly throughout the project and were great people to work with.Lucia Loffreda, Consultant, Research Consulting
