The first breakthrough came during our second meeting with Seth. He explained to us that he didn’t really think of himself as a LitRPG author after all.
More than anything, Seth saw himself as a builder of worlds.
The Strategy
Immerse people in Seth’s worlds before they read a single page.
Rather than the standard author website focused on book covers and headshots, we envisioned his site as an invitation to explore new worlds. Drawing inspiration from luxury travel and video game sites, we thought about how we might lure readers to journey into Seth’s worlds.
Visual Identity
Flexing across genres
Before we could start on Seth’s new site, we had to establish visual standards for his brand. The catch was, the design direction would need to accommodate a wide range of cover art, from books he’d released years ago to all the series yet to be written.
For Seth’s icon, we went with a subtle monogram that mimicked a signet ring. We chose a modern blackletter typeface and worked in lots of gradients and texture to give an ethereal, dreamlike feel. However, we didn’t go too hard into high fantasy, because some series lean more towards sci-fi and horror, and Seth has plans to experiment even further in the future.
A portal to adventure
With the visual direction set, we could finally shift our focus to Seth’s new site. We had a clear idea of how we wanted the site to feel for the user—magical, alive, mysterious, and immersive. Our web team, bless their hearts, was able to capture that vision with a custom WordPress build that’s fast, accessible, flexible, and easy for Seth to edit.
With series names like Battle Mage Farmer, stock photography wasn’t an option.
If we were going to invite people in Seth’s worlds, we needed to bring them to life visually. We spent time with Seth to get a feel for his taste in illustration styles, as well as how he envisioned key characters and places. Then we tapped illustrators Jon DiVenti and Emi Miller to create custom illustrations for the Battle Mage Farmer and The Exlian Syndrome series pages. Both illustrators were wonderful to work with, translating our feedback and direction into art that helped create that sense of immersion we were looking for.
Exlian Syndrome Illustrations
Battle Mage Farmer Illustrations
One character we didn’t illustrate
While it was tempting to have Jon or Emi take a crack, we decided that real photography would suit Seth better. We framed him as a literary magician in a moody study.
