fonte

Fonte’s top priority is facilitating a healthy community among writers and making space for writers to grow—intellectually, creatively, and relationally. The company name, Fonte, comes from the Italian word fonte, which means source. “This name serves as a constant reminder to that we are here to be a resource. We have the ability (and, therefore, the responsibility) to enable community and hard work among anyone who walks through our doors or visits our webpage,” says fictional founder Reid Price.

the process

The first generation of writers to grow up with a computer are getting published. Fonte Publishing exists for that generation, to bring the beauty of the writing process into the digital age. With Fonte, writers can reap the benefits of a blog-style writing community and the accountability of a formal publishing group.

advertising

Fonte has two major audience groups: writers and readers. To get the word out about their online writing community and to engage more writers with the Fonte brand, I created the “Write Now” campaign. Appearing in print and on social media, each ad calls out specific moments that prompt a writer and invite the writer to “Write Now.” To build readership, I designed an ad series announcing the release of three new books from Fonte (I used a few familiar favorites…we’re in a case study, here!) These ads will appear on posters, public transportation, and on web banners.

what i’ve learned

Fonte was my senior capstone project at Auburn. During our final semester, my class was prompted to “show what we’ve learned.” We had complete freedom to choose how each of us would do this. We each had a committee of professors from whom we could seek counsel and to whom we would present our final work. We would present our progress halfway through the semester and our final product at the end of the semester. We were required to meet with each of our committee members four times during the course of the semester. It was up to us to set our work schedules, schedule meetings, and choose our projects. There was no set class time.

This project was a full-time job and then some. I went to work from 7:30 to 10, then was in the studio all day until around 5. Sometimes I would return after dinner, finish up around midnight, then start again the next morning. I learned how to pace my workday and how to take good breaks. I learned that I could only stay until midnight about once a week without losing my mind. I also learned the value of peer critiques with wine :)

capstone

I developed the concept for Fonte the summer before my Capstone semester, weighing carefully the amount of work I would need to do to A) Accomplish the prompt to “show what I’ve learned” and B) Successfully round out a concept publishing house with a mission that wasn’t being replicated in real life at the time. Because I was making this up as I went, I created a brand strategy and wrote all copy for the brand from scratch. This ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole project. I got to decide what tone Fonte would use when talking to their writers and readers, how best to reach them, and what each audience member needed to hear to buy in. I created personas, established brand values, and wrote a mission statement that poised this fictional company to solve what I believe was a very real problem in the writing world at the time.