The Wix
Values Fanzine

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The Wix Values Fanzine started as quite a simple brief from the management. They realized it’s time to have a clear set of internal values that will be conveyed to all new and current employees. We were growing rapidly at the time, making it very hard to keep our culture, which is one of Wix’s most valuable assets. This project was designed to help with that challenge.

THE BRIEF

We received the written values, with a request to “quickly create posters or stickers with the values simply on them so we can spread around the offices for everyone to see”.

We were fine with the idea of it, but not the execution. We believed this was an amazing opportunity to do something much more than simple typography on a sticker or poster. After all, our values and culture are what defines us and makes us special, so why not create something special for it. The idea was formed: we wanted to create a fanzine - a fun internal magazine, which will be about the values and their ideas, each of them interpreted in an inspiring visual way.

It wasn’t easy persuading the management to let us have a go at it.  After all, a sticker takes much less time to design and produce than a whole magazin. But we did it, and off we went on the mission.

THE PROCESS

I sent out an email to the entire studio explaining about the brief, and invited everyone who wants to participate to join. Every designer was to be assigned with one of the values, creating a spread for the magazine with an interpitation of its idea. The chosen technique could be anything - illustration, photography, comics, collages, etc.

The response was amazing, so many designers wanted to participate - more than the ten values that we had actually. A solution was declared - there’ll be two editions to the final fanzine, each with different designs to same ideas, just like when we do an AB test.

Once we had the final group of designers working on it, each with his or hers assigned value, we would meet every week for a group review, helping each other with ideas and brainstorming together so we’ll have the best results.

THE FANZINE

The work of designing and producing the fanzine itself - cover, content, etc. - was done by myself and Ella, a designer from my team. It was quite exciting - for the first time within our work at Wix, we got to print at a real print house, not a digital one.
When all was ready, we got up early one day, like true newspaper delivery boys, and placed packs of fanzines all around our offices. That morning everyone got an email explaining the story of the project.

One of the nicest things we saw later on, was people taking their favourite spreads and hanging them on their office walls. That was quite a nice closure to the original brief.