Case Study
Giant Robot Media
online magazine launch and audience development
creative direction | editorial | video production | events| audience growth
Building a new magazine is hard. Relaunching an iconic one is difficult. When I teamed up with Giant Robot founder Eric Nakamura to relaunch the print magazine into the digital age, transferring the edgy, punk rock creative into a stylized and compelling user experience was a top priority.
We wanted to carry the spirit of what Giant Robot is into our current world and be as compelling as the old editions were.
A NEW Generation
REBRAND & DISRUPT
The first challenge was the branding. The iconic “Big Boss” robot that symbolized Giant Robot Magazine became the new face of the storefront and gallery that currently resides on Sawtelle in West Los Angeles. It is the symbol that represents the underground Asian American creative world, and the magazine was a platform to share the story of those creatives. The early days of David Choe, James Jean, Takashi Murakami, Justin Lin, and Margaret Cho, just to name a few, graced the pages of the magazine. In order to avoid brand confusion of the old print magazine, and storefront, and the gallery, a rebrand for a digital magazine made the most sense.
Taking design cues from the original “Big Boss” robot, the new robot has a larger stance, and a more square oriented shape, optimized for social profile images and square based graphics. The body shape was slightly rounder, to appear more approachable. The wordmark has a more aggressive stance, creating a strong CTA for ad placements.
Giant Robot “Big Boss” logo for store and gallery.
Giant Robot Media logo.
EDITORIAL & CREATIVE DIRECTION
What made Giant Robot Magazine special was its unrelenting effort to find interesting stores wherever and about whatever. There wasn’t a true subject that Giant Robot sticked too. Rather, it was a collection of stories, art, design, and movies of Asians and Asian Americans expressing themselves in a compelling and unique way. Whether it be Roy Choi selling a new taco inspired by his Korean heritage, or Audrey Kawasaki’s paintings on wood panels, Giant Robot always looked for the interesting, the awe, and the cool.
This editorial spirit had to be at the heart of the new digital magazine. With that, Eric and I formed the following mission statement.
“Giant Robot Media. Exploring the intersections of Asian, Asian American, and everything else.”
The other difference between Giant Robot magazine and other indie-magazines of the 90s and early 2000’s was the level of photography and artwork. It was always visually compelling, something we definitely wanted to carry over into the new digital magazine. Below is an example of some of that work.
Alan Yang at Atoboy in NYC.
George Takei, his exhibit at JANM.
Run River North and WHEELHOUSE.
A feature on n/naka and the uni dish.
Dan the Automator, tour announcement shoot.
1.61 soft goods and their custom Honda.
DIGITAL MAGAZINE
CREATIVE & WEB DESIGN
To highlight the photography Giant Robot Media produced, it was important to have a website that presented images as headlines. In addition, Giant Robot Media had a network of freelancers who posted remotely from around the country. To optimize a website for a fast-paced work environment and high design sensibilities, Squarespace was the clear choice for Giant Robot Media.
Using the photography and workflow as the guiding force for the design, I created the following layout for the editorial and the workflow to allow journalists from around the world use the site, both in the front and back end.
The first section of the site acted as a cover page for the magazine, highlighting a piece of photography or art that guided the creative direction for that specific issue. The second section was the most recent article released on the site, followed by latest stories, most popular, etc.
MARKETING STRATEGY
CREATIVE & WEB DESIGN
The hardest part with any new content-driven website is building an audience. You need a core audience that returns to your site so that it establishes strong business value to advertisers, business partners, and future business. But how do you break through the noise of thousands of online magazines out there? How do you differentiate yourself enough that people care to hang out at your site?
This was the first series of questions that Giant Robot Media had to answer. The easiest way to break through was to have great stories: have content that no one else had. To do this, Eric and I worked to break unique stories that had not made it through the upper funnel of publications. These unique pieces drew eyeballs and re-blogs on large sites, including the New York Times, the L.A. Times, Eater, Bon Appétit, and more. Below are some of those stories.
The first published video of the now Michelin starred Kato restaurant in West L.A. Giant Robot Media broke the story when the restaurant just started out in the strip mall.
The first public interview with the inheritor and CEO of the world famous Din Tai Fung, Warren Yang.
Feature with Locol founder and chef Roy Choi, at the time, Food Editor for Giant Robot Media.
EVENTS
EXPERIENTIAL & CREATIVE
To foster the community of creatives in Los Angeles, and to rekindle the relationship with the old and new Giant Robot audience, we produced several events around Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. These events included a celebration of food, culture, art, music, and film of emerging creatives and celebrities. Below are some photos documenting those events.
The famous GR2 Post-It Show.
Run River North x Giant Robot Media party.
DANakaDAN album release party.
Yukinori Dehara’s show opening night at GR2.
THE RESULTS
With any web-based publication, having solid numbers matter. Audience, unique views, average user duration… these numbers tell the story of how compelling the platform was. Below are the results of all the efforts of building this magazine.
